


falling into me

by her_black_tights



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Childhood Friends, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, PhD!Bellamy, Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, Step-siblings, college student!Clarke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-24 18:45:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14960066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_black_tights/pseuds/her_black_tights
Summary: Clarke’s had the worst year of her life and just needs an escape. After burning her life in Wellesley, Massachusetts to the ground, she plans to spend her summer alone and wallowing at the Cape Cod beach house that her family purchased with the Jahas and Kanes when she was a kid.There’s only one problem. Bellamy Blake, Marcus Kane’s adopted son, Clarke’s soon-to-be step-brother, and her childhood mortal enemy, has the same plan and opens the door when she arrives. Shirtless. Which is fine, because Clarke’s always thought that she’s hates him too much to ever find him attractive, anyway, and she’s pretty sure the feeling’s mutual.Or at least, that’s what she keeps telling herself.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, I'm super excited to share this fic with you!!! I've been dying to write a summer romance Bellarke fic for forever and finally got an idea good enough for it to work, complete with step-sibling drama and childhood friend drama!!! Basically, all of my favorite tropes. I'm planning on all of the chapters being about this length and for there to be somewhere around 6 parts. If you like it, please comment and leave kudos!!!!! I really like hearing y'all's feedback. :-)

If there’s anything Clarke has gotten good at during her twenty first year of being alive, it’s how to self-destruct without anyone noticing.

It’s for the best, she decided when she was 16 and her father died. Letting other people in was a luxury that people like her weren’t given, people who always had other people looking at them, expecting them to fail.

So, when Lexa breaks up with her, after three years of dating, of promising to spend the rest of their lives together, after planning out what they’re going to name their kids, what flowers they would like in their wedding, how many dogs they would like to have and whether they’ll go vegan sometime before they turn 30, Clarke doesn’t even flinch. She forces a smile, gets up from Lexa’s bed, and starts to gather her belongings from her girlfriend - wait, no, ex-girlfriend’s apartment.

“Clarke, aren’t you going to say anything?” Lexa begs, her voice uncharacteristically broken.  
“Yeah. Have a nice life, Lexa,” she manages before stuffing her last forgotten item (her favorite pair of lacy underwear that she always left over here after their date nights) into her bag. With that, she throws the door open and slams it shut behind her, leaving Lexa and the small life they had planned together behind.

It’s only once she’s thrown all of her earthly belongings in her car and has started driving to her family’s vacation home in Cape Cod that she lets herself cry.

*

Halfway to Cape Cod, Clarke gets a call from her mother.

When she sees the “incoming call” notice flashing across her phone, she considers not picking up. Hell, she even considers throwing it out of the car. However, she knows that the main thing her mother and her have in common is persistence so not answering will only delay the inevitable. She takes a deep breath, hits “accept,” and wedges her phone between her shoulder and her cheek.

“Hi Clarke. Marcus and I are finalizing our trip to Rome this summer and I wanted to check in and make sure you are sure that you don’t want to come,” Abby begins, cutting to the chase immediately. That’s one thing that Clarke has always respected about her mother; she really doesn’t do bullshit.

Clarke sighs and accelerates the car a little. Her original plan for this summer had been to spend her time working in a lab with a Chemistry professor at Wellesley College and visiting Lexa in Boston while she got settled before starting graduate school at Boston University. Once the Lexa part of the plan fell through, staying in Wellesley, with all of the memories of the time they had spent in school together, all of the places they kissed, all the plans they had made, felt like unimaginable torture. Besides, she had only taken the job working in Professor Nyko’s lab because she thought it would be a convenient way to bide her time when Lexa or Raven were busy.

Once the plan to escape to Cape Cod had crystallized in her mind, she decided to jettison everything that didn’t fit. She called Raven, told her what had happened and that she needed be alone for a while, and Raven, who was pretty used to Clarke’s bullshit after 3 years of friendship, basically verbally shrugged and told Clarke to call her when she was ready to talk.

Even when she thought she was spending her summer working in Professor Nyko’s lab, her not coming with her mother and her new fiancé, but old family friend, Marcus Kane, to Rome while Abby guest lectured at an Italian university’s summer med school program for American students, had been controversial. Clarke had always spent her summers with her mother and she knew that the time together had always meant a lot to Abby, especially after the death of Clarke’s father. However, at the current moment, absolutely nothing sounded worse than having to watch her mother experience new love for the second time while Clarke couldn’t seem to get it together to make anyone like her enough to see a real future with her. Or, at least that was what Lexa claimed part of the problem was when she broke up with her three short hours ago.

“Yeah, Mom, I’m sure. Professor Nyko’s excited to have me and I think it’ll be good for my med school applications,” she replies, her voice even and practiced. She had been planning her response to this question since she stormed away from Lexa’s apartment and called Professor Nyko to say a family emergency had come up and she wouldn’t be able to work with him this summer. He hadn’t been particularly upset; Clarke was decent at chemistry, not fantastic, and he had plenty of eager students who would love to take her spot. That was perhaps the only thing that was keeping her from feeling guilty about quitting three days before work was supposed to start.

Her mother sighs on the other side of the phone. For a brief moment, Clarke considers telling Abby everything. Despite her initially cold demeanor, her mother isn’t a monster. She would understand if Clarke told her that Lexa had essentially smashed her heart into a million pieces and that she needed a change of scenery. But, when Clarke tries to tell her everything, tries to pull the words from her throat, she cannot speak.

Lying to her mother has become so normal to her, it feels impossible to even begin to tell her the truth. To tell her that she failed one of her Biology classes, that she’s drinking far more than she should, that all of her friends consider her a stranger for how infrequently she leaves her apartment. To admit that she knows exactly why Lexa broke up with her and she can’t blame her, not really, when she’s basically been going through the motions for the past year.

To admit, for the first time in her life, that she needs help.

So, she takes a deep breath, and lies some more. Lays on some bullshit about how excited she is to work with Professor Nyko, how Lexa is overjoyed that Clarke’s staying in Wellesley over the summer so they’ll be close, that she got on the Dean’s List this semester and is already looking into which med programs she’s planning on applying to. It placates Abby, makes her feel better that she’s engaged to someone who isn’t Clarke’s father, even though he’s been dead for over five years now, and that she’s beginning a new life.

“Well, Marcus says that if you get lonely, Bellamy and Octavia aren’t coming with us to Italy either and would love to see you.”

Clarke lets out a groan that makes her sound like she’s 13 again. “Ugh, Mom, can you tell Marcus to please stop trying to make me, Bellamy, and Octavia get along? They don’t like me and I don’t like them either. It’s fine. Besides, they’re not even his real kids,” Clarke says, the words flying out of her mouth before she can think them through. A small evil seems to take over her, one that’s petty and cruel.

Immediately, once her mouth closes and she hears her mother’s responding sound of exasperation, she realizes that she’s acting like a child, saying all the same things she said about the Blake siblings when Marcus adopted them when she was 8 and pulled them into the close-knit circle of the Griffins, the Jahas, and Kanes. Bellamy had been 12, Octavia 5, and their mother had just died of alcohol poisoning. Kane had been Bellamy’s mentor through a program that paired low income children with lifelong mentors that could help those children escape from poverty and achieve success. He had known the Blake siblings since Bellamy was 8 and, to him, adopting the two of them had been a no brainer. He didn’t have children and his wife had died unexpectedly the previous year. However, things never went as smoothly as Marcus expected them to. Especially between Wells and Clarke and Bellamy and Octavia.

“.....Clarke, I understand that you don’t get along with them but it is important to me and Marcus that we all are a family,” Abby manages, after a long, tense silence. Clarke curses herself, angry that she is letting whatever bullshit happened between her and the Blakes when she was young get in the way of her mother’s happiness. After everything she’s been through, Abby deserves this, the happy family she’s always wanted.

Clarke focuses her eyes on the road, trying to regain her composure. She’s only thirty minutes away from Cape Cod now, so close to freedom for the rest of the summer; she can hold it together for a little longer.

“I’m sorry, Mom. You’re right. I’ll get used to it, I promise,” she says, finally, once the quiet between them has become sticky. It’s a small concession and it’s one she almost doesn’t want to give to her mother, just because of the precedence it sets regarding the presence of the Blake siblings in her life. However, she also wants to get off the phone with her as soon as possible before she falls apart under the weight of everything that has happened in the past 24 hours.

“Thank you, honey, I appreciate it. I’ll call you when I get to Rome. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

With that, Clarke hangs up the phone and places it on the seat next to her. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to center herself with the fact that she’s so close now she can see the ocean. Glancing over at her car’s GPS, she sees that it says it will take her 28 more minutes to get to Cape Cod. She rolls her eyes and pushes her foot to the gas pedal.

Clarke makes it there in 14.

*

When she arrives in Cape Cod, she begins to realize this might be a bad idea.

Not because of any regret involving the decisions that she’s made up until this point but because of what Cape Cod and the vacation house meant to her family.

It doesn’t hit her until she stops by the supermarket on her way into town. It’s the one she always went to with her parents when they came to to spend their summers here. As she walks up the aisles, searching for the bare essentials to get through the next week until she figures out what the fuck she’s doing here, she’s struck by memory after memory, of her parents together, of Wells alive, of the few moments when she, Bellamy, and Octavia could all stand each other at the same time.

The trip to the Cape was always one that was taken with the Jahas, Kane, and the Blake siblings in toe. Clarke’s dad, Kane, and Theolonius had gone in on the house together when Clarke was 10 as a way to spend more time together and with their families. The three families then spent every subsequent summer there together (much to Clarke’s chagrin). To be here by herself feels weird, unnatural.

She shops quickly to rid herself of the feeling, throwing boxes of cereal, cartons of milk, and an unholy amount of ramen into her cart before paying and leaving. She loads the groceries into her car, desperate to get to the vacation house because she’s convinced, as soon as she’s there, everything will be okay.

The drive from the grocery is a blur, memories flitting past her eyes just as quickly as the street signs. The vacation house is on a remote part of the Cape and it takes her a bit longer but once she sees the house, she let’s out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

Until she sucks it right back in when she sees another person’s car parked in the driveway. The absolutely last person the she wants to see right now.

Bellamy Blake.

*

To say Bellamy and Clarke got off on the wrong foot would be an understatement of epic proportions.

He seemed to hate her on sight and it drove Clarke, so used to be universally adored, absolutely crazy. He came up with an annoying little nickname that he always called her and teased her with it at every opportunity he had. He pulled on her pigtails. He laughed when she fell and rolled his eyes whenever she cried.

To be fair, Clarke was pretty awful to him too. She roped Wells into playing pranks on Bellamy, ripped pages out of his books, would try to figure out the thing he was most insecure about it and bring it up whenever she could. While Bellamy was good at being mean and consistence, Clarke was good at being ruthless and diabolical.

By the time she was 10 and he was 14, their parents forced them to declare a truce.

From then on, they mostly ignored each other, apart from little cruel comments at dinner or rolling their eyes whenever the other was speaking. There was peace but it was contentious and Octavia and Wells were always caught in the middle. Wells had been Clarke’s best friend since they were two but even he admitted to being a little scared of how monstrous Clarke became whenever Bellamy was involved. “I just don’t get it,” he confided in her one day, when they were both 11 and they were on the beach together.

“Don’t get what?” she asked, rolling over on her towel so she could face him.

“Why you and Bellamy hate each other so much. He’s actually really cool. He showed me how to make a paper plane yesterday and is lending me all these cool books. He said he would take me to the arcade when all the grown-ups are asleep,” Wells replied and his words made Clarke furious. Wells was all that she had, the one person who actually understood her. For Bellamy to try to take him away from her felt like the ultimate evil, a line that should have never been crossed.

“Whatever. If you want to hang out with Bellamy so bad, how about you be his best friend instead of mine?” she remarked, pouty and mean. She turned away from him, staring into the surf. Even then, she knew she was being childish but saw no other option.

“Clarke, you know I don’t want that,” Wells said, his voice measured and calm. He had this eerie peace about him for a child, something that she thinks fondly of even now, after he’s been gone for four years.

She didn’t respond. In fact, she gave Wells the silent treatment for the rest of the day. He took stride, but she couldn’t hide from the hurt in his eyes when they made eye contact at dinner. After they finished eating, she walked to the Jaha’s wing of the house, which Wells shared with his father, and knocked on his door.

Wells opened it, looking half shocked and half pleased to see her. “Can I come in?” she asked, her tone quiet and shameful.

“That depends. Are you gonna talk to me or are you gonna ignore me?”

“Talk to you.”

Wells smiled and she remembers even know how her heart warmed as she realized what a good friend she had.

They spent the whole night talking and catching up on what had happened that day and Clarke promised to never give Wells the silent treatment again.

“I’m sorry, Wells. Really. Bellamy just makes me mean,” she explained and he nodded. They were sitting on his bed (with the door open, like their parents made them promise, even though they were too young to really understand why).

“You know, you should try talking to him. You guys have more in common than you think.”

Clarke shrugged and told Wells that she would try more this summer. And she did. She said hi to Bellamy and asked how he was doing. She even laughed at his jokes sometimes and accompanied him and Wells (Octavia was too young then) on their late night trips to the arcade. And sometimes, she even talked to him, asked him questions about himself. At first he was shocked, his eyes becoming comically large whenever she said something kind to him rather than vitriolic but eventually he caught on. They weren’t friends but they weren’t enemies and all three families seemed to breath a sigh of relief that there was peace.

That was, until they both went through puberty and all hell broke loose. Teenage Bellamy was a terror, all adolescent testosterone and young man bravado. It was the epitome of everything Clarke, a model student and perfect daughter because her parents would never accept any less, hated. He snuck out, brought girls over the vacation house late night, drank from the adults’ liquor stash in a sly enough way that he never got caught. Clarke was the only one who noticed. Beyond that, she seemed to be the only one who cared. Once she was 13 and Bellamy was 17, she had made it her singular purpose to make sure he got caught at least once every summer but Kane wasn’t the harsh disciplinarian that her mother was and his punishments never quite stuck.

As they grew older, the animosity slowly began to die down; however, it was replaced with an uneasiness, a discontent with each other that they could never escape. At first, Clarke thought shame at how she had acted when she was younger but as she gets older, she realizes that there was so much more to it than that, years of being forced together when they wanted nothing to do with each other has stoked a particular kind of resentment and malcontent that now seems inextinguishable.

Now that Marcus and her mother are engaged, they see each other at least once every three months but every time they interact, it’s pained and uncomfortable. They make small talk when needed but never for too long.

Needless to say, after having one of the worst days of her life, her almost-step brother is the absolute last person that she wants to see.

She sits in the driveway for a moment, considering turning back. Gripping her steering wheel in sweaty hands, Clarke considers how humiliating it would really be for her to beg Professor Nyko for her job back. She had only quit two hours ago; it is possible he hasn’t found anyone to take it yet. Besides, Lexa has to be in Boston by now, and there is probably no risk of seeing her. It would be easier than committing to spending her whole summer in Cape Code, lying to her mother, hiding from her friends, and having to be around Bellamy.

However, something inside her refuses to budge. Maybe it’s her pride or how fucking scared she is of what will happen to her if she goes back. Either way, she finds herself cutting the ignition, stepping out of the car, and throwing her duffel bag over her shoulder. Her grocery haul is measly enough that she’s able to carry it in the other hand. Nudging the door of the car closed with her hip, she takes a deep breathe, preparing herself for the horror that waited on the other side of the oversized, ornate door ahead of her.

And then it opens to reveal Bellamy, who is very agitated and very, very shirtless.

“Clarke, what the hell are you doing here?”

*

It turns out Bellamy had actually gotten permission from Marcus to spend the summer at the vacation house, he explains as he begrudgingly helps her drag all of her shit in. “I told him I needed time to work on my dissertation. Alone,” he adds, pointedly, and she rolls her eyes in response.

“I get it, I get it, I’ve ruined your life for the millionth time. Now, are you going to help me drag this stupid bag to my room or will I have to do it myself?”

He glares at her for a moment, his jaw clenching and then unclenching as he takes her in. Clarke knows she must look like a wreck. She didn’t have time between the break-up and throwing her whole life in her car to change and was still wearing what she had worn to Lexa’s the previous night: a pair of leggings, an oversized sweatshirt with “Wellesley College” embroidered across the front, and her rattiest pair of white converse. She’s still wearing last night’s makeup, or at least, what’s left of it after crying on and off the whole drive here.

Of course, he looks fucking great. He’s in his workout pants and there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his skin. Clarke remembers, from the last time they saw each other during Christmas, that Bellamy has taken up lifting weights to help deal with the stress of being in the third year of his PhD program in Classics at Harvard. Given the fact that he’s flushed, sweaty, and pissed, she can surmise that she’s interrupted his work-out and she’s having a hard time feeling bad about it (though, she does feel bad in a different way about the fact that she’s going to have to avoid looking at the impressive set of abs that he’s developed for the rest of this conversation).

“Only if you tell me what the fuck you’re doing here. Marcus said I had the house to myself all summer.”

She frowns. “Why does it matter why I’m here? I’ll stick to my side of the house, you’ll stick to yours, we’ll never have to see each other unless we’re in the kitchen.”

That answer doesn’t seem to jive with Bellamy. He lets her duffel bag drop to the floor and crosses his arms across his chest. “Not good enough, Princess,” he replies and she almost screams at his use of that nickname, that stupid fucking nickname that he’s been calling her since she was eight goddamn years old.

“I told you not to call me that.”

He smirks. “Oh, really? It still bothers you?”

“Yeah, it still fucking bothers me. Whatever, I can take my own goddamn bag to my room.”

“Suit yourself,” he replies, before walking back in the direction of the weight room.

Once he’s rounded the corner, she grabs her duffel and her groceries and begin to haul them down the hallway. Unfortunately, the Griffins’ wing of the house is the furthest back and she has a long trip ahead of her. Her shoulder starts to burn with exertion once she’s halfway there. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Anything is better than having to explain to Bellamy why she’s here and why he can’t tell her mother.

She reaches her room eventually. Once there, she throws her duffel on the floor, tosses her groceries to the side (she promises herself she’ll remember to put the milk in the fridge before it goes bad), and collapses onto her bed. It’s a twin, the same one it’s been since she was 10 years old and her parents took her to IKEA to pick out stuff for her room.

It only takes a few moments before she starts sobbing.

Not because of Lexa and not because of school and not because of her mom. Because her dad was the one who helped her pick out this bed, let her get one with a canopy even though she was 10 years old and she was almost too old to have a princess bed. And he was the one who helped her paint her room lilac because that was her favorite color. Wells had helped her hang up the canopy and he had spent so many nights here, sitting on her bed, telling her stories, making her laugh, holding her hand when she got into terrible fights with her mother, and sharing his own stories of how he got into fights with his dad too, the same, terrible ones that had no winners and no end.

But, he’s been dead for four years and her father’s been dead for five and she still can’t get her shit together enough to deal with it.

Now Clarke knows why coming here was a bad idea. Not because she should have stayed in Wellesley and worked that job, even if it made her miserable and not because she shouldn’t have lied to her mother and not because she’s going to have to share the house with Bellamy Blake.

It’s because this place is filled with ghosts.

*

Clarke doesn’t remember falling asleep but wakes with a start. She rubs her eyes, sitting up slowly as she takes in her surroundings. The pinkish orange of the setting sun illuminates her dimly lit room and her groceries, duffel bag, and other sundry belongings are still on the floor. Judging from sun’s height is in the sky, it’s early evening and she’s probably only been asleep for an hour or two.

Thankfully, her milk is still slightly cold to touch and the rest of her food isn’t perishable. She picks up her grocery bags and begins the long walk from the Griffins’ wing of the house to the kitchen. Once Clarke rounds the corner, the smell of marinara sauce wafts through the air. Fuck. She forgot that on top of all the other annoying things about Bellamy that he’s also an amazing cook. It’s something he’s always given her a hard time about, given the fact a typical meal for Clarke is a a bowl full to the brim with cereal and milk, along with a packet of pop-tarts.

She pauses at the entryway to the kitchen, trying to decide if she really needs to eat right now or if she could put off talking to Bellamy for another hour or two. Unfortunately, right when she’s in the middle of deciding, her stomach announces her presence with a particularly loud rumble and Bellamy, who’s thankfully wearing a shirt now and standing at the stove, turns to figure out where that animalistic expression of hunger came from. When he sees it’s her, the corners of his mouth twitch up in a grin that she knows is at her expense. He motions for her to enter.

To turn around now would just be embarrassing.

“You hungry? I’m making spaghetti bolognese. It should be ready in about thirty minutes, if you can wait that long.”

She shakes her head and walks into the kitchen with purpose, planning on getting in and out as soon as possible. “I have my own food, thanks,” she says, trying to ignore how good everything he’s making smells. She notices that her mother’s pasta maker is sitting on the counter, which means he’s made fresh fucking pasta, the overachieving asshole, and he’s currently stirring a sauce that she can tell he’s been working on for a while. Her stomach betrays her once again with a particularly loud grumble and she curses under her breath.

“You sure? Cereal isn’t really dinner, Clarke.”

It’s the tone of his voice that’s always pissed her off the most. How he always acts like he knows so much more than her, that he’s so much better, like whenever she fucks up, he’s always there, gloating. She grabs a bowl from the cabinet and sets it down loudly, with the express intent of jarring him. He jumps a little and Clarke grins in victory before pouring milk then cereal (she’s gone for raisin bran this time because she’s trying to be healthy) into her bowl, grabbing a spoon, and settling at the breakfast bar.

She starts eating, focusing her eyes on a spot in a corner of the kitchen. Bellamy keeps cooking, his movements easy and practiced.

“So, I got a weird call from Marcus earlier.”

Clarke stiffens and sets her cereal bowl down. Her heart starts beating rapid fire in her chest as she tries to figure out what exactly Bellamy’s getting at. “Yeah?” she says, trying to keep her voice calm and even.

“Yeah. He said that he and your mom had just talked to you about going to Italy and you said that you couldn’t come because you had a job working in a lab in Wellesley and you were staying there for the summer.”

His back’s to her but she can tell that he’s having a good time trying to make her squirm. He’s stirring his sauce, lifting the spoon to taste it every once in a while.

“So, did you rat me out or not?”

He chuckles and it’s a mean sound.

“No, I didn’t. However, since I covered for you, I think you owe me a explanation.”

He turns to face her and she can’t quite place the expression on her face, whether it’s mocking or genuine. This new Bellamy, the man he’s grown into, has always caught her a little off guard. He’s still awful to her but there’s softening to it now, almost as though he doesn’t want to push her too hard.

She wonders if it’s that fucking obvious that she’s spent the past four years self-destructing in slow motion.

Clarke sets her mouth in a hard line and meets his gaze. “You know how my mom is. I don’t think me lying to her about what I’m doing this summer requires a fucking investigation. I decided I didn’t want to work in the lab so I quit and now I’m here. That’s it,” she says and she’s never been so thankful for how good she is at lying. He stares at her, hard, as if he’s trying to catch a quiver of her upper lip or a twitch of her eyebrow. He’s used to Octavia, who always sticks out her bottom lip a little whenever she says anything that is even half-false.

After a beat or two, he seems to accept her story, albeit begrudgingly. She notes the tension in his shoulders, the hard line of his jaw. He’s the only person who’s been able to catch her in a lie and though he seems at least a little convinced, she doesn’t think he’s completely bought it. She knows this will not be the last time he asks her these questions.

“Well, just stay out of my way. I’m here to work on my dissertation and I can’t have any distractions,” he instructs but there’s something at the edge of his voice that makes her think there’s more to his story as well. She raises an eyebrow at his words and he glares at her, as if daring her to ask.

“Trust me, you won’t even notice I’m here.”

She picks up her cereal bowl and walks out of the kitchen. It’s only when she’s halfway down the hall that she realizes that her heart’s racing and she doesn’t quite know why.

*

For the next few days, she barely sees him. He gets up earlier than her, eats more often, and generally conducts himself in a manner befitting a normal adult human. Clarke, on the other hand, sleeps in until noon, eats one meal a day, spends most of her time in her room fucking around on her laptop. She runs into him every once in a while in the hall and he’s always on edge whenever they speak.

True to his word, he seems to spend most of the day working on his dissertation. One morning when she’s woken up at 6am and is unable to fall back asleep, she drowsily walks to the house’s library to look for a book to read until she’s able to fall back asleep.

When she opens the door, she’s shocked to see him in there, hard at work this early in the morning. There’s shadows under his eyes that make it clear that he’s been up all night and he’s hunched over the desk, his hair wild and his gaze strained as he tries to read something on his laptop. He only notices her when she coughs loudly, announcing her presence.

“What’re you doing here?”

She wrinkles her nose at his words and takes a step into the library to find the bookshelf she kept all of her favorites on when she was a kid. Once her back’s to him and she can feel his glare burning a hole in the back of her neck, she responds. “Can’t sleep, looking for a book to read. I would ask you the same question but from the crazed look in your eyes, I can tell you’ve been sitting here for at least twelve hours.”

He lets out a grunt that she takes as confirmation that she’s right. He goes back to typing furiously and she goes back to looking for a book and they continue this way, in a sticky silence, for a few minutes.

Clarke finds an old young adult science fiction book that she loved as a kid and pulls it from the bookshelf. Smiling to herself, she flips through the pages, caught up in memories of when she would read this book on the beach. She takes it a little and some sand from at least five years ago falls out.  
  
“I remember when you were reading that book. You wouldn’t shut up about it for the whole goddamn summer. Drove me crazy.”

Clarke looks up in surprise to see him looking at her intently. She can’t hide her expression of shock at the realization that he actually remembers something about her from their shared adolescence, especially when he had been so distant then, only speaking to her to take a jab at whatever he deemed particularly offensive about the way she was conducting herself that day.

“Yeah, well, it was a good science fiction story written about a bisexual heroine so sue me for being a little fanatical about it.”

He takes in what she says carefully and that same odd expression from the kitchen, on the first day she was here, falls over his face. “Yeah, you’re right. I was kind of a dick back then, anyway,” he says, easily, and if his admission that he remembered something about her had shocked her, this one shakes her to her core. The Bellamy she had known for most of her life would never admit something like that, especially to Clarke. She finds herself staring at him for too long and when he meets her gaze, she quickly flicks away her eyes.

“I wasn’t exactly on my best behavior, either,” she says, finally, and it’s his turn to look shocked. Another uneasy silence falls over the pair of them and it makes her desperate to leave the room. When she moves for the door, he immediately fixes his eyes on his computer and starts typing again.

For some reason, she lingers at the doorway for a moment. Her fingertips grip the wood of it and she finds herself searching her mind for something else to say to him, anything to break this silence.

“Hey, Bellamy?”

“Yeah, Clarke?”

“You should get some sleep. You look like shit.”

To her surprise, he guffaws in response and she finds herself smiling as she slides the door shut behind her.

When she gets back to her room and slides back into her bed, she struggles to focus on the words in the book. Whenever she tries to center her mind on the story, it keeps wandering away and thinking about what Bellamy said instead.

When she falls back asleep again two hours later, the last thing she remembers thinking about is the sound of his laugh.

*

For her first week in Cape Cod, Clarke is able to pretend that all the shit that happened with Lexa was in another life, one that has no bearing on the one she’s living now. She hasn’t been on social media and has barely looked at her phone since she arrived, other than to text Raven that she’s gotten here safe and to complain about Bellamy being here.

On her ninth day, she decides, like a fucking idiot, to open up Facebook for the first time. It’s around 3pm, she’s only been awake for two hours, and she’s feeling particularly self-loathing. After a week of spending most of her time in her bed, she’s moved to spending most of her time by the pool as it’s one of the few places in the house that she knows Bellamy will never be.

She pulls up the Facebook app on her iPhone. Clarke tells herself that she’s just going to scroll through her newsfeed for a few seconds and then delete it off of her phone so she won’t be tempted again. Instead, her fingers move before she can think and she finds herself looking at Lexa’s Facebook.

They weren’t the type of couple who had their relationship status listed. Clarke was a secretive and private person in general and Lexa hadn’t come out to her family yet so both of them saw no reason to make that information public. However, they had a good amount of pictures that they had amassed, always taken by their friends or Clarke’s family.

She sees now that all of them had been deleted. Even the ones that were taken when they hadn’t started dating yet but were often at the same gallery openings, the same poetry readings, the same house shows, and they would flirt with each other in dark corners, the light always catching the green in Lexa’s eyes in a way that would make Clarke’s heart sing. The sight brings something like a scream out of Clarke’s throat.

She shouldn’t be surprised. Lexa has always been good at burning bridges. Clarke had watched her do it enough times with friends who betrayed her or acquaintances who rubbed her the wrong way. However, that doesn’t soften the sharp pain in her chest. She sucks in deep breath after deep breath, her throat feeling like she has swallowed a handful of glass.

She doesn’t cry. She promised herself that those moments of weakness she had allowed herself in the car would be the last. Gripping the sides of her pool chair, she slows her breathing, focusing on the surf in the distance, only a 15 minutes walk from the vacation house. Thankfully, after a few dreadfully long minutes, her breathing returns to normal.

Without thinking, she rises to her feet and rushes to the kitchen. Unfortunately, Bellamy is there, eating a snack of celery dipped in peanut butter, leaning against the counter in a loose t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and she wishes she was confident she would be able to speak without sobbing so she could make fun of him for his comically healthy snack. However, despite all the deep breathing she was doing a second ago, she stills feels a sob caught in her throat, so she merely forces a pained smile at his “hey Clarke” and makes her way to the fridge.

She hasn’t drank since she got here. She made herself promise she’d last at least a week. After all, Clarke’s drinking habits had been one of the concerns Lexa had brought up during their break-up. Clarke had rolled her eyes then, said something mean in response, but she had taken it as a challenge, to prove to herself (and maybe one day, if given the opportunity, to Lexa) that she was totally in control.

Throwing the fridge door open, she quickly scans the bottom drawer, where she knows her mother keeps wine year-round. Clarke sees a bottle of rosé from 2014 and pounces, pulling it out of the drawer and closing the fridge behind her. Setting it on the counter top, she gets up on her tip-toes to grab a glass from the middle shelf of the cabinet next to the fridge. Bellamy watches her all the while, bemused.

“It’s 3:30pm, Clarke. Isn’t it a little early to starting drinking?”

“It’s summer, Bellamy. It’s never too early to start drinking.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

Clarke looks up before opening the bottle with a twist of her wrist. She pours herself a glass and then takes a sip.

“Please save me the ‘mature, grown-up Bellamy’ act. I’m not in the mood.”

With that, she takes the bottle of wine, her glass, and storms out to the pool, slamming the door shut behind her. Once she’s back in her pool chair, she guzzles down the glass currently in her hand and then pours herself another.

Bellamy doesn’t follow her. He doesn’t come and check on her later either. And once she’s finished the bottle of wine, she can’t hide from the way that makes her feel. Let down, like she expected him to follow her out here in the first place.

*

The next morning, she wakes with a splitting headache and a strong urge to vomit. She makes it to the bathroom before said urge comes to pass and spends the next fifteen minutes hurling her guts out.

Once nothing’s left in her stomach, Clarke rests her head against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl for a few moments. Following a whole bottle of wine with another hadn’t been one of her best ideas but it had felt right at the time, when her mind kept flicking between memories of Lexa and, when those weren’t painful enough, memories of Wells and then, when she ran out of those, memories of her father. She drank until she couldn’t think anymore then fell asleep, on top of her covers.

She gets to her feet. Usually, when she had a hangover, she would go get brunch with Raven or Lexa at the diner a couple blocks away from her apartment. However, since that obviously isn’t in the cards, she resigns herself to eating some pop-tarts. She grabs her phone and checks the time. It’s 11am, so Bellamy would hopefully be working on his stupid dissertation already and the kitchen should be empty.

Making her way to the kitchen takes a bit longer than usual, given how nauseous she is. She’s so caught up in making sure she’s upright, she doesn’t place the smell that’s wafting from the kitchen until she’s at its threshold.

Bellamy is standing at the stove, making bacon and eggs. There’s a plate sitting on the counter, ready, with two eggs sunny side up, a piece of sourdough toast, and four slices of bacon. He’s still working at the stove, frying an egg.

“Hey. That’s for you, if you’re hungry.”

“Really?”

She can’t hide the shock from her voice and it makes Bellamy blush a little before turning away to focus on transferring the egg to his plate. Once that’s done, he turns off the stove and takes a seat at the breakfast bar, leaving a place between them and where he put her food. Tentatively, she moves to sit down as well and as soon as she’s seated, he pours her a cup of coffee from the mug placed next to her plate.

“Yeah, really. I heard you in the bathroom this morning and figured you might need some grease and eggs. Besides, I needed a break from working.”

He doesn’t make eye contact with her. Instead, he focus on pushing a piece of bacon around his plate with his fork. She’s stunned, unable to speak, and an uncomfortable quiet falls between them.

When she finally collects her thoughts enough to speak again, her voice is unexpectedly small. “Thanks. Er, sorry you heard me throwing up,” she manages before taking a bite of bacon. She almost moans at how good it tastes. He’s right, this is exactly what she needed.

“S’no problem. I drank a little last night and was kind of hungover too.”

They eat together in silence for a while. Clarke’s mind racing as she tries to process what has happened. She had seen this side of Bellamy before, whenever Octavia was sick. She remembers once, when Octavia was young and got food poisoning from a nearby seafood restaurant, he spent the whole day at her side, making sure she was drinking enough Gatorade and forcing her to eat as many Saltines as she could stomach. She had been so shocked then, to see him be so caring. It was different than the Bellamy who sneered at her and then later, as they grew older, ignored her. It had made her wonder what was wrong with her, why he seemed so comfortable being so terrible to her.

Being on the other side of his consideration, his kindness is so foreign that Clarke feels as though he might as well be a stranger instead of someone she’s known since childhood.

They finish eating around the same time. Before Bellamy can get up, Clarke does and she reaches for his plate and brings it with hers to the sink. “What’re you doing?” he asks as she turns the faucet on and runs both their dishes under the water.

“Doing the dishes to thank you for cooking.”

She doesn’t look over her shoulder but she feels him staring at her. Moving quickly, she grabs the pans and spatulas off the stove and puts them in the sink. After pushing her sleeves up, Clarke turns on the water and begins to wash their dishes.

“You don’t have to do that.”

His voice cracks a little and it’s then that she realizes she’s making him uncomfortable. She feels him coming up behind her, like he’s gonna try to push her out of the way and do the dishes herself. Before he can get too close, she spins around to face him.

“I know I don’t have to. I want to. It’s fine, Bellamy. Really. Go work on your dissertation. I don’t have anything else to do today, anyway.”

From the look on his face, she can tell he doesn’t seem to quite believe her. His gaze is incredulous in nature as he looks from her to the dishes. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. They’re just dishes. They’ll take me ten minutes. You aren’t putting me out.”

If there is one thing that they have learned about each other over the 13 years they’ve known each other, it is that they are both hardheaded people, the type who never back down. She can tell he’s testing her resolve but she doesn’t budge. Smiling at him, she turns away and goes back to washing dishes.

She isn’t surprised by this behavior. She knows he has a hard time accepting kindness. She remembers how he fought with Marcus constantly after he and Octavia was first adopted, refusing to accept that he had been saved. For the first year, he refused to wear the clothes Marcus had purchased him and would only wear his worn out clothing until they turned into rags. She remembers hearing Marcus talk to her mother and father about it, how torn up he had been over it because all he wanted was to give Bellamy and Octavia a good life, the one they would have never had if they had been put in the foster care system or even if their mother had still been alive.

Clarke didn’t understand it then. She was a child herself and couldn’t even begin to understand what Bellamy had gone through. Even now, after she’s been through some shit herself, she knows she will never be able to truly know what he has gone through in his life. She feels him still standing there, by her side, wrestling with himself, and the softest sadness comes over her as she feels the weight of how truly hard his life has been. When she was young, she had always pretended that wasn’t true, because whenever she saw glimpses of of it, the trauma he had endured, it stirred the most startling pain in her chest.

After a few moments, he finally realizes she isn’t going to change her mind, he sighs, accepting his defeat. “Well, if you insist.”

“I do. Go work on your paper.”

She looks over at him and there’s something like a smile playing across his lips. “I forgot how bossy you can be,” he says and she immediately blushes, looking down at her hands again so he can’t see.

“What do you mean?” she asks, struggling to keep her voice even. She focuses on scrubbing at a hardened bit of yolk on the pan as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

“When we were kids, you used to try to boss me around all the time. Used to drive me fucking crazy.”

Clarke sneaks a glance at him and there’s this light in his eyes, one that she’s never seen directed at her before. He hides from her gaze for a few moments before checking to see if she’s still looking at him and something like electricity courses through her veins when their eyes meet. Quickly, she flicks her eyes away and tries to school her expression into something resembling calm.

“Seems like everything I do drives you crazy,” she replies. Clarke glances over at him and he doesn’t meet her eyes this time, avoiding her questioning gaze.

“That’s not true. Not anymore, at least,” he says and his voice is quiet. She fixes her eyes on her hands once more, transferring the pan she has been washing the drying rack. She moves to put the rest in the dishwasher, which Bellamy is unfortunately standing in front of. Thankfully, he immediately picks up on what she’s doing and slides out of her way so she’s able to put the rest of their dishes in the dishwasher. She closes the dishwasher and takes a step back.

“Really? You seemed pretty pissed off when I showed up here.”

“Yeah, well, I would’ve been pissed off to see anyone.”

“Even Octavia?”

“Especially Octavia. We’re not exactly…on speaking terms right now.”

She raises her eyebrows in surprise. He’s not looking at her, focusing on staring at the small bit of ocean that you can see from the kitchen window. Even though she doesn’t dare spend too long looking at his face, she can see the pain that lingers there, the hurt. She knew that things had been tense between Bellamy and Octavia over the past year, beginning in December when she told the family that she had decided to not go to college. Clarke remembers how angry Bellamy had been, how she heard him arguing with Octavia later that night for hours.

“Still?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” she says and for a brief, horrible moment, she considers telling him everything. About Lexa, about school, about her lies to her mother, about how she still cries herself to sleep sometimes thinking about her father and Wells. Not because they are close or because she trusts him but because he’s here and he’s been here for so long, has seen her at so many different places in her life. She doesn’t know how this thought is born or why she thinks it might be a good idea but she’s been so alone for so long and maybe, just maybe, she’s finally tired of it. She opens her mouth to say more but, before she can, he interrupts her with \a dismissal of her sympathy: “no apologies needed. It’s fine. It’s gonna be fine.”

Suddenly, the air between them is tense, uncomfortable. She realizes that he has told her something he wasn’t intending to. Without another word, he turns and walks out of the kitchen, leaving Clarke alone to wonder what the fuck just happened.

*

Perhaps the thing that has always upset her the most about him is how he closes just as quickly as he opens, that they have had many moments like the one in the kitchen but he always ruins it, pulling away just when they get close. That’s not to say that she hasn’t done the same to him, that there haven’t been times where he finally sees through her and tells her that he understands and she glares at him and tells him he’ll never understand anything about her, that she’ll never let him get that close.

It’s a dance they’ve gotten comfortable with, one where both of them know have memorized the choreography. It started shortly after her father’s death, when he walked in on her crying in the kitchen of the vacation house at midnight when she found the pint of ice cream that Jake had purchased for her last summer. When she tried to pretend she hadn’t been crying, that she wasn’t hurting, he told her that was a load of bullshit and then held her to his chest for what felt like forever, her tears soaking his thin sleep shirt.

And then there was the time that Clarke heard him fighting with his girlfriend at the time, Roma, all night and then, when she finally slammed his bedroom door and left, Clarke knocked on his door and listened to him talk about how difficult it was to open up to someone and how Roma was tired of waiting for him. She held his hand in her lap as he spoke, drawing circles on his palm, and he only pulled his hand away when there was a knock and the door opened to reveal a weepy Octavia who needed comforting after a bad dream.

But, they never speak of it. Not in the harsh light of day. She has thought about it, once or twice, but she knows almost without truly knowing that to speak of it would ensure that it never happened again and she knows she can never give these moments up, these small intimacies between her and the only person who has ever seen her for what she really is: lost, confused, and alone.

So, she spends the rest of the day in her room. She only goes down to get dinner when she knows he’s working in the library. The next day, the same. And when she doesn’t see him for another two days, she knows that’s for the best because she knows if she saw him, she would tell him everything and more and perhaps the darkest truth of them all, that she misses him and she needs him and she knows deep down, that they are more to each other than they will ever be willing to admit.

When he surfaces on the third morning, he knocks on her door. It’s around 10am and she’s just starting to wake up and almost thinks the sound of fist hitting wood is part of her dream. But, when it happens again, Clarke realizes it must be real, that he must really be here. She rises to her feet and pads toward the door, sleep making her movements drowsy and slow.

He jumps a little when she opens the door, almost as though he was expecting her not to answer.

“What’s up?” she manages after they’ve been staring at each other for a few moments too long. He shifts his gaze to the floor, places his hands in his pockets.

“I accidentally made too much for breakfast and was wondering if you would want some.”

The words leave his mouth rapid-fire and he only looks up at her when he’s finished speaking. There’s a flicker of something too pure in his eyes and it makes her heart ache.

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

They eat breakfast together that morning in a clumsy silence, making awkward small talk whenever either of them starts to feel too uncomfortable. She retires to her room afterward, her heart racing like it always does when she gets a little too close to him. She closes her door, resigns herself to spending the rest of the day by herself reading her favorite books from childhood, like she has been ever since she got here.

But then, at 6pm, there’s another knock at her door and it’s Bellamy again. He’s a little bit more confident this time and looks her in the eyes this time.

“Did you make too much food again?” she asks, teasing. His lips twitch up in a smile that she isn’t expecting and it takes her breath away.

“You caught me. It’s hard to make food for one.”

They both know he’s lying but they don’t particularly seem to care.

“What’s it this time?”

“Pasta with pesto and roasted asparagus with lemon. C’mon, I know you haven’t eaten anything green since you got here.”

She finds herself giggling and she doesn’t quite know why. “You got me there. I’ll be down in a minute.”

He nods and then turns to leave. She notices then that he’s wearing a white t-shirt and it accentuates the muscles in his back in a way that makes her mouth dry and her heart stutter-stop.

“Hey, Bellamy?”

The words leave her mouth unexpectedly as he’s about to walk away. He pauses, his shoulders tensing, and when he faces her, there’s the oddest look on his face, one that makes something inside her tremble.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

She means the vacation house but she knows there’s something bigger beneath her words, that his prolonged absence after that moment they shared in the kitchen has reminded herself of the truth she’s always been desperate to forget.

Something in his expression shatters at her words and, to be quite honest, she shatters too and they hold each other’s gaze a beat too long but neither of them seem to care.

“Glad you’re here too, Princess.”

This time, his use of her childhood nickname doesn’t make her want to scream. She feels her lips pulling up in a grin before she realizes that warmth is pooling inside her, threatening to spill over.

With that, she follows him downstairs, already acutely aware that everything is about to change and she can’t tell if it’s for better or for worse. 


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all, sorry this chapter took so long!! I hope the length makes up for it!!! Thank you all for your super sweet comments; I appreciated all of them and thank all of you for taking the time to write something about this story as it means a lot to me. I hope you all enjoy this chapter as well. Kudos + comments are always appreciated. ;-)

She can’t help but notice that his smile is a little crooked, that one side of his mouth twitches up a little higher than the other. When Clarke first becomes aware of this little quirk, they’re eating dinner together (which they’ve done every night for the past three nights), and she can’t help but wonder why she hasn’t seen it sooner; how she used to avoid looking at him directly whenever he was grinning because his happiness had always seemed to be at her expense.

But, it isn’t now. In fact, to call it happiness would probably be too large, too optimistic. It isn’t as though they spend their shared meals together talking or laughing or traversing the large canyon of resentment that exists between them. No, they mostly just sit in silence. Occasionally, they talk about their days, she compliments his cooking, they argue about who will clean up the kitchen afterward (he now has realized that she’ll never let him win but he sometimes sneaks cleaning a pot or pan when her back is turned, only for her to catch him in the act and grab it out of his hand, both of them laughing but not quite understanding why).

But, there’s togetherness. They sit beside each other and share the delicious food he makes and Clarke realizes this is about all the human connection she can handle right now, considering how fresh the wound of Lexa’s betrayal is, how it still pulses sometimes when she least expects it. She’s realized now that he’s probably caught on that there’s something going on with her (and, to be quite honest, she’s now realized the same about him and the way he gazes off into the distance sometimes like he’s wrestling with himself over something heavy) but he knows her well enough not to ask and she doesn’t either.

They don’t talk much otherwise. He still spends his time in the library and she still spends most of her time in her room or by the pool (never swimming, only reading). Sometimes they cross paths the few times she finds her way to the home gym at the same time he does but they don’t speak then and she tries her very best not to look at him. Then, they go shower in their separate bathrooms and fall asleep in their separate rooms.

Sometimes, she hears him talking on the phone. His bedroom is above hers, on the second floor. It seems to be the same conversation, over and over, and his voice gets more and more desperate every time. There’s another conversation he seems to have on the nights he doesn’t have the first one, but that one has a different feel to it, more anger. She’s learned after he gets done talking to whoever he’s talking to, she’ll always hear him walk down the stairs and to Kane’s study, where the best alcohol is kept.

But she doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t either, even when she hears him pause outside her door when she’s crying or when she comes downstairs for breakfast with red eyes and a puffy face and in some fucked up way, she takes comfort in that because she isn’t ready to talk about it yet. Especially with him.

*

“When was the last time you left this house?”

It’s an unexpected question and Clarke’s surprised when she finds it leaving her lips while her and Bellamy are eating their typically silent breakfast together.

“Went to the grocery store last week.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“What do you mean, ‘that doesn’t count?’ I got in the car, drove away from here, was gone for two hours, went to the grocery store and got more food, which you are enjoying right now, I might add. More than could be said for you, Princess.”

She wrinkles her nose at ‘“Princess” but can’t find it in her to be particularly mad about it. The way he uses it now doesn’t carry the same ire that it did when she was little and sometimes, usually when they’ve both been drinking and meet up unexpectedly in the kitchen to make a late night snack, affection softens the word until it feels like less an insult and more like a term of endearment. She picks up her plate, grabs his, and begins to clean up. Bellamy doesn’t try to stop her, though she can see his knuckles clenching at the effort.

Clarke begins to load the dishwasher.

“I’m just saying going to the grocery store isn’t exactly an adventure to the outside world.”

“I don’t think your original question was inquiring about adventure. I thought you were just asking when I last left the house.”

“Holy shit, Bellamy, can you stop being a know-it-all for four fucking seconds,” she says but there’a smile shaping her words that makes them softer, less cruel. She finishes loading the dishwasher and turns to face him. Instead of the angry scowl she expected, he’s grinning.

“Only if you stop being vague and difficult. Get to the point already.”

“I think that we should go into town. Maybe get a drink somewhere? Or a bite to eat? Anything to get out of here,” she manages, after a long pause. Her words come out of her mouth too fast. She feels heat climbing up her neck and coloring her cheeks bright red. She doesn’t know why asking him this question is making her so nervous, why she has thought about doing it for the better part of the morning but hasn’t been able to get up the nerve. She quickly turns away from him, busying herself with cleaning the pan he cooked their eggs in, so she doesn’t have to see his expression when he tells her that it’s a stupid idea, he can’t be distracted from his dissertation, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere with her anyway.

“Sure,” he says so quietly that she almost doesn’t hear him. Slowly, she finishes washing the pan and puts it in the dish drainer. She finally turns around and sees him smiling at her, big and genuine. Her heart stutters in her chest because he looks so beautiful when he smiles and she had never let herself process that thought before in all the time they’ve spent together, the years they’ve spent hating each other.

“Cool, do you wanna meet at the front door in like 30 minutes?”

It’s a struggle to keep her voice even but she manages it, just barely. He nods and gets up from his seat, pushes his chair in, and disappears upstairs, leaving Clarke alone to the process what the fuck she’s just done.

 *

She’s tried on three different outfits and hates all of them.

It’s the first time Clarke has put on real clothes in two weeks and she’s struck by the urge to throw everything she owns in the trash because nothing looks quite right or feels appropriate and she can’t stop thinking of the way he smiled when she was teasing him, of the way his grin made warmth spread throughout her body.

No, no, no. She’s been down this road before, where she notices how attractive Bellamy is, how his eyes crinkle up at the corners when he smiles, how his jeans hang precariously off of his hip bones and how she can’t help but wonder what those would feel like, digging into her skin as he fucked into her. The first time it happened, she had been thirteen, him seventeen, and she immediately knew, even then, that there was no place for these thoughts because it would never happen. Not even in her wildest dreams.

Usually, she’s able to beat back these feelings, able to distract herself by how obnoxious he can be or how arrogant he is or how he almost always seems to have a girlfriend (she met his latest one, Echo last year at Christmas and, as far as she knows, they’re still going strong). But, having to be around him constantly, especially when she’s the most frustrating combination of heartbroken and horny, is driving her up the fucking wall.

Finally, she settles on a plain white t-shirt that hangs off her curves in the way she likes and high waisted jeans. Not too dressed up but still presentable. She does her makeup in a hurry, since she wasted at least twenty minutes deciding on her outfit, and settles on just mascara and a pink lip.

Grabbing her sandals with one hand and her purse with the other, she rushes out of her room, down the stairs, and manages to reach the front door just when he does. He, like fucking always, looks like he put no effort into his appearance but still looks amazing, wearing a short-sleeved button down shirt and a pair of black jeans. His hair’s still wet from the shower and she watches as one drop of water travels from a strand of hair to his cheek before he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

“I’ll drive,” he offers and she forces a smile in thanks.

Once they get into the car and start driving into town, Clarke starts to think that this might be a bad idea. The silence that sometimes exists between them in the house feels so much heavier in the car, so much more intentional. He mutters something to her about buckling her seatbelt, which she rolls her eyes at, and then they don’t say another word to each other for the first five minutes of driving and she can’t help but notice that his knuckles are gripping his steering wheel so tightly that they’re turning white.

With no conversation to focus on, she turns her attention to his car. It’s cleaner than she expected. She remembers that Bellamy had saved up and bought this car, a shitty Volvo from the late 90’s, when he was 17. Marcus had insisted on buying him one himself but Bellamy had refused and got this car behind his adoptive father’s back. She had been so confused by him then, not able to understand why he preferred to work hard for everything when it could be so easy for him.

The next ten minutes inch by painfully, neither of them speaking. It’s only when they drive into the main stretch of town that Bellamy looks over at her, his mouth in a fine line and his brow furrowed. “Well, where do you want to go?” he asks and his voice cracks a little in the middle of his sentence with the uncertainty of it all. Part of her wants to tell him to drive back, that this is a terrible idea, but small part of her that’s still brave speaks up: “let’s go to that bar. The one that all the old townies go to.”

He raises an eyebrow but flicks on his turn signal and turns in the direction of the bar. It takes them a couple minutes to pull in front of the bar, a dive with a predictable nautical theme, and since it’s not particularly popular, especially at 2pm on a Thursday, they have no problem finding a parking spot. Once they’re both out of the car, Clarke’s struck by panic as she realizes that she’s truly in uncharted territory. Sharing meals, that’s one thing. Getting a drink together feels like something else entirely.

She pauses before they walk before the door and opens her mouth to tell him that this is a terrible idea and that they should just go home. But, before she can speak, he places his hand on the small of her back and pushes her in the door. “This was all your idea, Griffin. You can’t back out now,” he says.

There’s teasing in his voice, the good-natured kind that they are beginning to share more and more. She rolls her eyes at him, trying to pretend she finds him annoying like she usually does, but it’s hard to do that convincingly when she can still feel his hand on her back.

*

Clarke orders their drinks (a beer for him and a vodka soda for her) and they sit at a table off to the side. The bar’s basically empty, apart from a few hardened regulars, and Tom Waits is playing in the background. It’s not a particularly well-taken care of space and, in many ways, it resembles a cemetery more than a bar. They both sit there for a moment, taking in the scene in front of them.

Her heart thuds in her ears, painfully loud, as another awkward silence settles between them. Clarke can’t place what it is that makes it so difficult for her to talk to him sometimes, how his very presence makes her tongue-tied. She had thought that the few conversations they’d shared in the kitchen would make this all easier but it isn’t and she can’t help but wonder what exactly had made her think this was a good idea. No matter what, her and Bellamy aren’t the type of people who are ever going to be friends, she finds herself realizing. No matter how many meals they share, no matter how many times they’ve caught each other in a vulnerable moment. She was kidding herself when she had thought that things were different. An unexpected sadness falls over Clarke as she tells herself these bitter truths and she decides that she’ll just finish her drink and then tell him that they should both go home.

But, just when she least expects it, his voice breaks the silence: “this is nice.” His voice is quiet and she can barely hear it over the gravel of Tom Waits’s voice, echoing from the jukebox in the corner.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You were right. I needed to get out of the house. Working on that paper all day, it’s been driving me crazy,” he says so off-handedly that she feels like she could be anyone right now, not someone who he has known his whole life, who he has hated on-and-off for years. She wonders if he’s as lonely as she is.. Calm down, Griffin. He’s still Bellamy. He’s just bored, he doesn’t actually want to be your friend, she tells herself. It’s the same thing she’s been thinking ever since they started talking to each other a bit more. There’s no significance to this moment, to anyone of this. They are just two bored people who have no one else to talk to. Nothing more.

She takes a hefty sip of her drink and it burns on the way down. Already, she’s starting to feel a little buzzy, probably because she hasn’t eaten much today. She lets the feeling course through her bloodstream, the pleasant numbness of alcohol soothing the ache that she’s been feeling since this morning, when she logged into Instagram and saw that Lexa had blocked her. That’s the whole reason she had decided to come here, after all. Not to chat with Bellamy. To forget. Besides, bringing him here is mostly just so she doesn’t have to deal with the desperate sadness of drinking alone.

Or, at least, that’s the story she’s telling herself whenever her mind starts to wander and ask questions she doesn’t want to answer.

Now that she’s a little tipsy, she’s feeling a bit more up to conversation. And from the way he’s downing his beer, she thinks he’s probably feeling the same. He probably just wants some company so he doesn’t feel like he’s drinking alone too.

“What’re you writing about?”

He glances up at her in surprise at her question, almost as though her response is the last thing he’s been expecting. “Do you really wanna know?” he asks, an edge in his voice that he immediately chases with a big sip of his beer. Something in her aches at his disbelief. Had she really been that cruel to him, to make him think so little of her and her opinion of him?

“Yeah, of course I do. Marcus is always talking about how interesting your work is,” she says and she takes another sip, this one bigger than the last. Already, the pain of this morning is beginning to feel far away and she’s thankful for it. Besides, she has been wondering what Bellamy’s been working on for a while; she’s just had trouble getting up the nerve to ask.

She notices a flush creeping up his neck but she can’t tell if it’s from her words or the alcohol.

“I’m still trying to figure out my topic. It’s hard to narrow it down; I’ve been preparing to write this dissertation for what feels like my whole life but now…it’s harder than I thought,” he manages, after a long pause. His words hang in the air for a moment and Clarke’s shocked at the vulnerability held in them, the truth. He doesn’t meet her eyes while he’s speaking and she’s glad for it because she doesn’t know what she will do if she looks into him and sees something real.

“C’mon, you gotta be able to tell me one thing about it.”

He looks up at her, amusement dancing in his eyes where she thought there would be annoyance. “Persistent,” he mutters, before taking another sip of his beer. Emboldened by the drink she’s just finished, Clarke finds herself knocking her hand into his, pressing him to speak.

“C’mon. I’ll keep bugging you until you tell me.”

“Fine. I’m thinking about writing about gladiators. What they meant, their cultural significance, their symbolism, how they allowed Roman culture to act out its aggression. It’s a kinda tired topic so I’m trying to figure out my way in. That’s been the hard part, anyway.”

There’s a light about him when he talks about his work, one that Clarke can’t help but be envious of. She’s never felt that way about studying biology. Sure, it’s something she’s been good enough at her whole life, something that she knew would be the right choice, the responsible one, but she’s never been able to muster any true passion for the subject. She nods while Bellamy’s talking, tries to keep her face neutral, but that isn’t enough to keep her mind from beginning to spiral as she realizes once again that she has no fucking idea what she’s doing with her life.

She pulls it together and forces a smile at his words. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

He shrugs, finishes his beer. “Well, I have to, unless I want to fail out of my program.”

Clarke frowns. She wonders if she said something wrong, if there had been a misstep. She had forgotten how hard it can be to talk to him, sometimes, how he shuts down out of nowhere and she has never been able to figure out why.

Before she can open her mouth and ask another question, trying to push him a little farther, he gets up, picks up his drink, and then hers. “I’m getting another drink. Do you want one?” Her eyes widen in surprise but she manages a nod. Bellamy walks to the bar, ordering himself a whiskey, straight, and another vodka soda for her.

While he’s gone, Clarke’s left with her thoughts and the dulcet tones of Tom Waits, which aren’t exactly making it easy to forget about her broken heart. She fists her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a dollar, probably from the last time she went out before finals. Determined, she walks across the room, to the jukebox, and forces the dollar in. Scrolling through the music, she desperately searches for anything that isn’t terribly depressing. Finally, she sees the Talking Heads discography and forces at least three more dollar bills into the machine so it’s the only thing that’s playing for the next thirty minutes. Once “Burning Down the House” kicks on, the bar’s patrons look up from their drinks, trying to figure out who’s the idiot who decided to make this bar less of a graveyard. Defiantly, Clarke meets their glares before walking back to their table. Bellamy’s sitting there with a strange expression on his face as he watches her sit back down and take a large gulp of her vodka soda.

“This living up to your expectations?” he asks and she can’t quite place his tone, the exact way it crackles beneath the surface. Her heart flutters and she glares down at the table.

“What do you mean?”

“Being out of the house. Is it everything you’ve dreamed of?”

There’s a sharpness to his words and she can’t quite tell if they’re at her expense or not. She flicks her eyes up to glare at him and he just smirks back at her, taking another sip of his drink. Anger stirs in her gut and she chases it with alcohol. God, she had forgotten how annoying he can be.

“Yes, this is exactly what I wanted. Sitting with you, my absolute favorite person in the world, here, in this bar, drinking cheap vodka. There’s no place I’d rather be,” she snarks and, unexpectedly, his lips twitch up in a smile and, for some reason, she finds herself smiling too and then they’re laughing, together, at the absurdity of it all, of them, trying to be civil to each other in this godforsaken bar. If only their parents could see them now.

“I’ll drink to that,” he replies and he raises his glass. She lifts hers and they clink their glasses together and both finish their drinks. Before she can ask, Bellamy gets up, gets them another round, and, suddenly, the small talk doesn’t feel so painful and the silences don’t stretch out as long and when they get up to leave (because Bellamy is just on the edge of too drunk to drive them home), Clarke has forgotten all about Lexa, about stupid fucking Instagram, and how she has no idea what she’s doing with her life. No, all she can think about is the exact curvature of Bellamy’s smile.

*

The drive home is quiet but not in the excruciating way that it was before. Clarke rolls down the window, sticks her head out, tastes the sea air. Bellamy laughs when he realizes what she’s doing but it’s a kind sound. There’s a pleasant thrumming behind her eyes now, one that she knows is because of the alcohol but, deep down, she can tell that there’s more to it than that.

He pulls into the driveway and they both get out of the car. They linger on the steps to the door for a moment. Bellamy sits down on the stoop, motions for her to as well, and she joins him.

Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he produces a pack of cigarettes. “I thought you quit,” Clarke finds herself saying. He shakes his head, pulls one out of the pack and offers one to her as well. She takes it without thinking and lets him light it for her.

“I did. But, that was because Echo didn’t like it. Now that we’re broken up, don’t really see the point.”

Clarke’s heart stutters her chest, causing her to choke on the smoke in her throat. She coughs ungracefully for a few moments before regaining her composure.

“Broke up? I thought you guys were….” she trails off, not wanting to say more for fear of what it might betray. At this point, she had taken Echo as a given, someone who was probably going to always be a part of Bellamy’s life, and by extension, hers, for the foreseeable future, ever since they met in Bellamy’s PhD program. She had heard from Kane that they didn’t exactly hit it off at first, but sometime in the middle of his first year, something changed and they had been together ever since. There had been a fierceness about their relationship that had always sparked something dark and twisted in Clarke that she could never quite name. Even when Octavia had told Bellamy that she hated Echo and wouldn’t tolerate her presence, Bellamy had stood his ground, said that Echo was part of the family now and Octavia had to accept her, which, of course, went poorly and had been one of the contributing factors to the Blake siblings’ terrible fight over Christmas break.

Bellamy looks up at her half-question, his brow furrowed. He takes another drag, flicks the ash with a practiced move of his hand, and lets out a long, belabored sigh. “I mean, it’s more of a break then a break up. Or, at least I hope it is.”

Something in Clarke shatters at his words, small and petty, and she doesn’t want to think too hard about it, not wanting to acknowledge the part of her that doesn’t want Bellamy and Echo to get back together.

“Well, I hope it works out.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The silence that stretches out between them now is a sticky one and it has Clarke rushing through her cigarette. She’s desperate to get back to her room, where she doesn’t have to think about Bellamy or Echo or the twisting in her gut that started ever since she realized that Bellamy might be single and she is too and they are both here with nothing else to do. When she sits up, starts to get ready to leave, she’s stopped by him turning his gaze to her, his eyes questioning.

“What about you and Lexa? Marcus told me that part of the reason you were staying in Wellesley this summer was so you two could spend more time together before she started at BU.”

Fuck. She knows this was coming, that there was no way she could hide from telling him, or anyone other than Raven, what had happened earlier this month. That had been the whole reason she had decided to go to Cape Cod, before she knew he would be here, to escape from having to tell everyone in her life that she had failed at love again, like she always does.

She stiffens, sits on her hands, staring straight ahead. Well, she doesn’t have to tell him the depressing truth, that her and Lexa are over and there’s no hope for a reunion, unlike him and Echo. Might as well practice the version she’s planning on telling her mother at the end of the summer, when she asks why Lexa hasn’t RSVP’ed to her wedding yet.

“We’re taking a break too. Until she gets settled in Boston.”

The words feel heavy in her mouth, with their falseness, their artifice. She’s careful to modulate her tone, trying to keep it hopeful, and she thinks she pulls it off, until she glances over at Bellamy and sees his expression: distrustful, confused, suspicious. However, he gets up, dusts off his pants, and pulls his eyes away from her.

“Well, I hope that works out for you too,” he replies and then he turns around and walks back into the house, leaving Clarke alone with her thoughts, like he always does.

*

It’s not that she doesn’t already know what the fuck’s going through her heard, it’s just that she doesn’t particularly like it. Because she knows where this train of thought ends and it’s nowhere good. Because he’s going to be her step-brother by next March. Because, no matter how civil they are to each other now, she knows that deep down, they’re like oil and water and they’ll never mix quite right. Because, after everything that’s happened with Lexa, she can’t handle another fucking rejection. Most of all, because even though her heart’s shattered into a million pieces, she knows she’s still a little bit in love with Lexa, probably will be for the rest of her life, and because, from the way she saw Bellamy’s eyes go far-off and dreamy when he talked about the potential of him and Echo getting back together, he’s probably in a similar situation.

She sits there, outside, by herself, for just long enough to see the sun start to go down. She figures that’s enough time that she won’t run into Bellamy in the kitchen.

Sighing, she gets up and walks into the house. Her head’s throbbing from day-drinking so she makes her way into the kitchen to get some water. Like she predicted, it’s empty.

When Clarke walks in, she notices something on the counter. It’s a grilled cheese sandwich, sitting on a plate at the spot where she normally eats. Next to the plate, there’s a note that reads: “sorry if it’s cold by the time you come in, didn’t know how long you were planning on sitting outside.” She feels herself smiling as she realizes that Bellamy made this sandwich for her.

As the note predicted, it is cold but she wolfs it down quickly and chases it with a big glass of water and two ibuprofen. And after she finishes eating and makes her way to her room, it’s only when she sits on her bed that she realizes that she can’t stop smiling.

*

Clarke doesn’t know what possesses her to finally take a dip in the pool but she hopes it means she’s regaining her will to live. After all, it’s a crime to have spent this much time by the pool and the beach without even getting her toes wet. Her younger self, who spent whole summers submerged in a body of water, would hate her for scrounging this opportunity.

It’s been a couple days since she and Bellamy got that drink together and she’s barely seen him since. She at least expects it this time and almost finds it within herself to not give a shit. He has an excuse, telling her over breakfast the previous day that he needed to focus on his research even more than he had been before. She had rolled her eyes at his words, at his sheepish expression, but accepted them without complaint and went back to eating the eggs he had made for both of them. He left as soon as he finished, not even sticking around to argue with her over who gets to do the dishes.

So, the next morning, she decides to make plans that don’t even factor him in. She realizes now that she had been doing that for the past week, planning around the small moments that they shared together throughout the day. It was stupid and silly but Clarke knows that it’s just because she’s lonely and there’s nothing else to do her other than read YA novels, dodge Raven’s calls, and hide from all the big questions that she’s going to have to answer when summer’s over.

It takes a few minutes for her to find her swimsuit. It’s a black one-piece, with thin straps and a plunging neckline. Clarke frowns as she holds it up, trying to remember why the fuck she bought such a revealing item of clothing.

Suddenly, she remembers that, before shit had gone south with her and Lexa, they had discussed taking a little trip this summer, to the beach. Clarke had been so happy that day, as it had been the first time in a while that Lexa had seemed content in their relationship, confident in their future. They had gone to the mall together, trying on swimsuits for each other and laughing the whole time. Clarke remembers now that the only reason she had gotten this particular one, as opposed to the more modest, utilitarian ones she preferred, was solely because of the way Lexa’s eyes had darkened when she had seen Clarke in it.

Clenching the bathing suit in her hands, Clarke feels a sob building in her throat but she swallows, refusing to let it out. She can’t keep letting memories of Lexa ruining everything she does. Besides, it’s the only swimsuit she has.

She pulls it on without looking in the mirror, for fear of chickening out. Once it’s on, she grabs a towel, the book she’s been reading, and runs out her room and down the hall before she loses her nerve.

And, of course, she runs right into Bellamy.

It takes a moment for her to realize what’s happened, that the blunt force that she’s been met with as she turned the corner is the person, and, on top of that, is the person she’s been planning on avoiding all day. They spring apart as if they’ve been electrocuted and then, when Clarke looks up to apologize, she sees the oddest look come over Bellamy’s face, something dark, something secret.

He’s checking her out.

She blushes as soon as she realizes it and quickly pulls her towel around her body. To his credit, he averts his eyes as soon as he realizes what he’s doing and takes a step away from her, giving her a wide berth. The tile floor is cool beneath her feet but her body feels like it’s on fire.

“Sorry, I was just heading to the library.”

“No worries, I wasn’t looking when I came around the corner.”

If she thought before that she and Bellamy had learned all the ways to be uncomfortable around each other, this certainly tops all of them. They’re close enough that she can smell the remnants of the cigarette he just smoked on his fingers. She wonders what his mouth would taste like if she kissed him. She wonders if he would kiss her back.

They’re both trying so hard not to look at each other that it’s almost more incriminating than making eye contact. “Well, uh, I’m going to go to the pool,” she says, finally, which sounds like such a fucking stupid sentence that she hates herself as soon as it leaves her lips. Bellamy swallows, nods, and then continues down the hall, without saying another word.

For a moment, Clarke stands there, stunned. Now, it’s not that she’s surprised that someone finds her attractive. Ever since she sprouted sizable tits and an ass to match when she was 14, she had become accustomed to people staring at her in the unfortunate way that all early bloomers do. However, her whole life, even when she had wanted Bellamy to look at her like that, he never had, not even after she turned 18.

Stop thinking about it, she tells herself, sternly. It’s not a big deal, she repeats in her head over and over as she walks from the hallway to the pool. He looked away as soon as he realized what he was doing because he knew that it was wrong, that nothing like that could ever happen between them. Besides, even if he was actually checking her out, it’s not like he’ll ever do anything about it. He’s obviously still in love with Echo.

Once she gets outside, it’s easier to forget about what happened in the hallway. It’s mid-morning and sunlight dances across the pool. Clarke places her towel on a nearby chair and then takes a running leap into the water, landing with a loud splash.

The water’s cold in the way she needed, the way that makes her feel alive. She spends at least 30 minutes just doing laps, soaking in how fucking good it feels to be swimming again. After that, she just floats, looking up at the sun.

She remembers now how she and Wells would spend their summers, either in the pool or at the beach. He would always come up with the best games for them to play. Their parents would have to practically drag them back to the house, kicking and screaming, always begging for “just ten more minutes.”

Her body grows heavy with grief and she starts to sink. Quickly, she rights herself, flips onto her stomach, and swims to the steps to climb out of the pool. She grabs her towel, dries herself off, and then lays down on the beach chair and begins to read, desperate to distract herself from thoughts of Wells, her father. She had been doing so good, up until now, so caught up in her grief over Lexa breaking up with her that she had forgotten all the other reasons she had to be sad. Frowning, she forces herself to focus on the words on the page, desperate to salvage the day.

Thankfully, she does. Clarke spends the rest of the day either swimming, snacking, or reading. She doesn’t run into Bellamy until 9pm that night, when the sun has finally gone down and she starts to shiver. She walks into the kitchen with her towel around her shoulders, her wet body dripping on the floor.

“Did you even try to dry yourself off before coming into the house?” he remarks dryly, as he loads up the dishwasher. Clarke rolls her eyes and in, retaliation, gets super closer to him and then shakes her hair like a dog until he’s covered in water.

“What the fuck, Clarke?” he yells but by that time, she’s run out of the kitchen and is halfway to her room, shrieking with laughter.

It’s the happiest she’s been in days and she’s so glad that she’s been able to do it for herself, without anyone’s help.

Though, catching Bellamy checking her out certainly didn’t hurt.

* 

She notices his eyes linger on her a bit more than they used to, that his gaze has a bit more intention behind it. The tension between them has a different vibration to it now and they both move a bit more stiffly in response as they carry out the same tasks they’ve been doing every day since they began this clumsy orbit around each other.

She finds herself gravitating toward clothing she had forgotten about, the items stuffed at the bottom of her duffel bag. Crop tops, high waisted shorts, body suits, long skirts with high slits up the side, all of the stuff that she had stopped wearing months ago, once melancholy had made a home in her bones. She tells herself it isn’t because she wants to see if he checks her out again and it’s mostly true, but she cannot deny the thrill that climbs up her spine whenever she catches him glancing at the bit of ass check that always hangs out of her favorite pair of jean shorts.

And, to be quite honest, she thinks it’s a game that he’s playing too, that she’s not the only one testing the limits of what they’ve created here. When she arrives in the house’s gym, she notices he’s more often not wearing a shirt than wearing one, that she’s caught him smirking when her eyes slowly drag from the harsh lines of his collar bones to the defined ‘v’ that frames his pelvis. In retaliation, she wears just her sports bra and the smallest booty shorts she can find when she does her sun salutations, making sure her ass is directly in his line of vision when she moves into downward dog.

It’s a dangerous game and neither of them are winning. From every victory she claims, every time she notices his eyes lingering too long and then she meets his gaze and he flushes red and looks down, he claims one himself, when she lets herself stare a bit too intently on the freckles dusted across his face or becomes fixated on the exact width of his shoulders. At first, she looks away, just like he does, but by the end of the third day, she holds his gaze, defiant, until he finally breaks eye contact and pretends to be very interested on the food on his plate.

“You should come swimming with me,” Clarke says, finally. Bellamy looks up in surprise, doesn’t say anything at first. His brow’s furrowed like he’s working the idea over in his head.

“Why? You seem to be having plenty of fun out there by yourself.”

His voice is raspier than she expected. He finishes his dinner and gets up to put his plate in the sink.

“Because, it’s a literal crime to have spent almost a month this close to a pool this nice and never use it.”

She catches amusement in his eyes. He turns to face her and smiles at her, big and broad and a little mean.

“Really, Clarke? A ‘literal crime?” Bellamy says, finally, and she realizes she fucking loves the way his voice sounds when he’s pretending to be fed up with her.

“Yeah, you’re lucky I haven’t reported you to the authorities.”

“And, what authorities are in charge of making sure people use pools?”

She bites her lip, trying to hold back her laughter. It feels like it’s been an eternity since she’s let herself joke around like this and she can’t believe that she’s doing it with Bellamy. He seems like he can’t believe it either, his jaw a little slack, his shoulders a little tense.

But, it makes sense. They’ve only been around each other for almost a month. It would be weird if they didn’t joke around with each other, since they’re both the only person the other talks to.

Suddenly, the giggle that she’s been holding back falls from her lips and he joins her, his chuckle deep and low. They laugh together for a few moments. After, Clarke gets up, picks up her plate, and takes it to the sink. He moves so she can rinse off both their plates and put them in the dishwasher. The pans can wait until later.

“Did I win you over?”

“With your ironclad argument about pool laws? Oh, most definitely.”

They’re both grinning ear to ear and Clarke thinks that they must both be a little drunk, since they split a bottle of red over dinner. That’s all it is, nothing more.

“Okay, well, I’ll meet you by the pool in ten minutes. ” she says, her smirk a challenge. Because she’s sick of lingering glances, of flushed faces, of pretending they don’t know what’s going on. She doesn’t know what she thinks spending more time together will solve. Maybe it’ll remind her that, despite how much he’s grown up, he’s still Bellamy and that’s enough to keep her from wanting him.

He looks at her intently, the same way he looks at his laptop when he’s trying to craft the perfect sentence. She feels her heart stutter when their eyes meet and he doesn’t look away and she wonders if that’s why he always does, because he knew that the second they really looked at each other, that neither of them would be able to handle it, the truth of what they’re doing.

Bellamy meets her challenge head on, his grin wolfish. “Okay,” he says and it’s then that she realizes what she’s done, that there’s no turning back from this, that both of them know what’s about to happen.

He leaves the kitchen.

The second he’s gone, all wine-induced bravado leaves Clarke’s body and she reaches for the half-empty bottle on the table and finishes it off.

*

She hates this part of herself sometimes, the one that loves pushing boundaries until they break. Lexa did too, always rolling her eyes whenever she noticed Clarke prodding her where she was the most vulnerable, just to see what would happen. “I don’t want to play this game with you anymore,” Lexa had told her, a few weeks before they broke up. Her voice had been deadly serious. After, when Clarke had gone home because Lexa said she wanted to be alone, she kept replaying it in her head over and over again because it hurt so goddamn much and she’s always been a little bit of a masochist.

She’s pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge and is sitting on the pool chair, waiting for him. She hadn’t needed to change, her bathing suit still under her dress from when she’d been in the pool earlier that day. It’s a little after 9pm and the last bits of day are peeking through purple-black clouds.

Just when she thinks that Bellamy isn’t coming, that he’s smarter than her and realized that this is a line that shouldn't be crossed, she hears the thud of his feet against the deck. Bellamy appears, wearing a nondescript pair of navy swim trunks

He sits in the chair next to her. Clarke releases a breath that she didn't know she was holding but sucks it right back in when she lets herself notice how fucking good he looks right now.

Quickly, she unscrews the top from the wine bottle in front of her and takes a hefty swig.

“I take it we aren’t using cups?”

“Seemed like a waste of perfectly good glassware.”

“Can’t disagree with that logic.”

He takes the bottle from her hand and takes a swig himself. The knowledge that his lips have touched something that just touched hers ignites a fire in her belly. She quickly pulls the bottle from his hand and takes another big gulp to extinguish it.

She needs to put some distance between them, she realizes, just so she can get her head on straight. Before she can get distracted by his goddamn good looks again, Clarke peels off her dress, takes off running, and then jumps into the deep-end of the pool.

The water is warm from earlier in the day. It feels, Clarke thinks to herself, like an embrace from someone you haven’t seen in a long time, precious and familiar but distant. She stays under for a few moments, letting her body sink to the bottom. She’s always been able to stay under for a while, beating Wells whenever they competed to see who can hold their breath for the longest.

She likes the calm that comes with being underwater, the silence. Her thoughts stop moving rapid-fire and her brain doesn’t feel like it’s on fire.

After her lungs start to burn and her head starts to feel fuzzy, Clarke pushes on the pool floor with her feet and launches to the surface. Her first few gulps of air are euphoric and it’s only when she opens her eyes and sees Bellamy standing at the edge of the pool, concern written all over his face, that she remembers that he’s here at all.

“God, are you part fish or something? You were down there for a while.”

She laughs and swims away from him. The water’s sobered her up a little, made her thinking less sloppy. Nothing between them needs to happen tonight, she decides. Nothing should. They’re just two people who’ve known each other for a long time, sharing space, and that’s it. Besides, she was starting to get lonely, swimming by herself all the time.

“Nah, just haven’t fucked up my lungs by smoking a pack a day.”

He, of course, has lit a cigarette right at that moment. “Fuck you.”

Immediately, a devilish idea comes to Clarke and she swims over to where he’s standing. Right when he looks down at her, she splashes him, extinguishing his cigarette and getting him very, very wet.

“You’re going to regret that, Griffin,” he says. She laughs but underneath her bravado, her challenge to him, she’s quivering with anticipation. This is a game that they have played so many times before, when they were children, with Wells and Octavia. One of them would splash the other and then whoever who was splashed (usually Bellamy) would jump into the pool and try to catch the other and enact some other form of water-based torture (usually involving more splashing or, if Bellamy was the one who caught them, being thrown across the pool). Clarke was able to evade him longer than Wells and Octavia. They would spend hours in a stand-off, Clarke trying to escape and Bellamy always pursuing her. It usually ended in a draw, with both of them too tired to play any longer but neither admitting defeat. Or, at least, it did until Bellamy got too old and stopped playing with her and Wells and everything between them became prickly and awful again.

“Only if you can catch me.”

He smirks, bearing his teeth.

With that, Bellamy jumps into the water. Once he’s surfaced and caught his breath, he comes after her. Immediately, Clarke dives down deep and swims as fast as she can away from him but he’s just a bit behind her, his fingertips grazing the underside of her foot. She shivers at the touch and pushes herself to swim even faster. Quickly, almost as if the last time they played this game was last week instead of 10 years ago, they fall into the same dance they always do with each other.

Clarke always takes the lead at first, mostly because her parents took her to swimming classes beginning at age 3 and until Bellamy was adopted by Marcus, he hadn’t seen a pool before. However, like always, he catches up with her and that’s when the fun really starts.

Because neither of them are the type of people who half-ass things, even if it’s stupid game that they played when they were kids. Clarke feels Bellamy gaining on her and her heart’s pounding in her ears, not just because she’s almost out of breath and needs to come up for air soon, but also because she wonders what he’ll do if he catches her. There seemed to be a threat in his smirk but she doesn’t know quite what it could have been suggesting. She figures they must be a little too old for him to try to throw her across the pool (though the impressive muscles he’s been cultivating this summer promise her that he definitely could, if he really wanted to).

Finally, she comes up for air. He does too. They’re on opposite sides, facing each other.

For a moment, they both take big gulps of air, Bellamy’s sound decidedly more asthmatic than Clarke’s. Her heartbeat echoes throughout her whole body, vibrating in her bones. Her head’s fuzzy and every breath feels like a blessing. For a moment, she lets herself soak up that feeling, before she remembers where she is, what she’s doing, and who exactly she’s doing it with.

“Given up yet,” she asks, after both of them have caught their breath.

“Not a chance.”

The game starts again, both of them with their heads above water, trying to figure out the other’s next move. Whenever she even thinks of making a move, he anticipates it immediately and puts his body in her way. Clarke grits her teeth, frowns. This is gonna be harder than she thought.

After a few minutes of this hell, they’re at a stalemate. Their games almost always ended like this when they were kids so she should have seen it coming. However, there’s no grown-ups here to call them in for dinner or to scream for them to get out of the pool. No, it’s just the two of them and that knowledge sinks into her, makes her electric.

The next time she moves, she doesn’t even think, she just throws her body into the water so he has nothing to anticipate, no intention to read. At first, she gets past him but, her victory is short-lived. Right when she thinks she’s past him, his arms wrap around her middle. She tries to get free of his grasp, kicking and scratching at him like she always used to do when he caught her when she was a kid. He’s stronger than he was before, more determined. No matter how much she wriggles, no matter how difficult she makes it for him, he isn’t letting her go.

Finally, when coming up for air no longer is a choice, Clarke admits defeat by tapping his arm twice. Bellamy loosens his hold on her, lets her come up for air, and then turns her around so he can call her a loser to her fucking face.

She doesn’t look at him, not right away. They’re standing in the part of the pool where her toes barely touch the floor. She has to grip his arm for balance. Finally, once she realizes she can’t deny her surrender any longer, she meets his gaze.

Clarke doesn’t know quite what she had been expecting, how she thought this would all play out now they’re not kids anymore, but nothing prepares her for the conclusion she should have seen coming ever since she asked him to swim with her (though, when she thinks back on this moment later, her hair still wet and her fingers still pruney, she’ll realize that this is the conclusion they’ve been hurtling toward since she showed up here, broken and desperate).

Instead of gloating like she expects, Bellamy doesn’t say anything. She’s close enough that she can count his freckles, see the sparkle of gold in his eyes. And when she opens her mouth to ask him what the hell’s going on, he shakes his head and silences her immediately with a kiss, harsh, vicious, and totaling.

And Clarke kisses him back.

 


	3. Part III

To be honest, Clarke has thought about this moment so many times that she cannot process that it’s happening right here, right now.

The first time she fantasized about what it would be like to kiss Bellamy, she was 13 and he was 17. Up until that point, her awareness of Bellamy’s attractiveness was mostly based upon on how whenever she brought a girl friend along to family gatherings, the friend, no matter how talkative she may have been usually, would go quiet as soon as Clarke introduced her to him. When she would confront her friend about it, they would always blush, admit to their crush, and, when Clarke expressed her absolute disgust at anyone ever finding Bellamy attractive, they would like at her like she was fucking crazy. “You must be blind,” one friend said and Clarke rolled her eyes in response.

It wasn’t that once Clarke turned 13 and hormones began to wreak havoc on her body, her mind, her very way of being, that she woke up one morning and realized the truth about Bellamy. No, it was gradual. At first, it was that she thought that the way his hair always fell in his eyes was at least a little cute. Later, she realized she found some of the annoying stories he would tell to Octavia, when all the kids were sitting by the fire making s’mores, endearing. One morning, toward the middle of the summer, Bellamy accidentally put some of Clarke’s laundry in with his, thinking it was Octavia’s, and when he handed it back to her, apologetic and distant, she waited until he closed her door and then she placed one of the shirts to her face and inhaled the scent of the laundry detergent he always used. She didn’t wash those shirts for the rest of the summer, content to let them get dirty and sweaty and gross, just so she could sniff them every once in a while and be reminded of him.

When she left that summer, she didn’t wince away from his touch when he gave her a hug (their parents insisted that her, Octavia, Wells, and Bellamy all hugged each other before they said goodbye for the school year, claiming that no matter how much they all fought, they were still family and families hug each other when they say goodbye). Instead, she found herself relaxing in his arms. When they stepped away from each other and into their parents’ respective cars, she found herself thinking about the way he smelled: just like home but different.

The next time they saw each other, she had been excited, so excited that her parents were suspicious. “Clarke, you never like going over Marcus’s,” her mother remarked as they drove to Kane’s home for Thanksgiving. Clarke had shrugged and stared out the window for the rest of the drive, tapping her fingers on the carseat the whole ride.

When they arrived, she was sorely disappointed. Bellamy greeted her with a cruel and dismissive “Princess,” before introducing her to his new girlfriend, Roma.

After that, Clarke learned her lesson. No matter how she may feel toward him, he will never change. He will always be cruel and she will always be even crueler in response. Whenever those feelings of attraction would rear their ugly head, Clarke would force them down, distract herself with other people, drink more, or remind herself of how when she was 11, he once dropped a slug down the back of her shirt and laughed when she screamed and cried.

Now, she stops her fantasies before they start. Or, at least she tries to. The past couple days, she hasn’t been as good at it, too caught up in the bullshit game that they’ve been playing with each other. She’s let herself think about his lips and how they would feel against hers, what his mouth would taste like, how his body would feel, pressing hers against the wall. She can’t count the amount of times that her eyes have become fixated on his hands, watching the way they glide across his laptop keyboard as he writes a sentence he’s particularly excited about or their deft movements while he minces garlic. Or, the amount of times she’s lost herself in the gravel of his voice while he talks, wondering what his voice would sound like wrapped around the words: “fuck, Clarke, you feel so good.”

So, when it happens, when it finally fucking happens, it takes her a second to realize it, just because, no matter how obvious this all will seem later on, when she’s processed this past day with the clarity of sobriety and hindsight, she cannot believe it. Because she never thought a world could exist where Bellamy liked her as a person. Because she has always thought his hatred of her pointed toward her deepest flaws, the ones that she had decided were what made her unlovable. Because, at the end of the day, she still remembers how he held her when she found out Wells was dead, how he told her how everything was going to be okay, and even though it was a cliche, she believed it when it came from his lips.

The same lips that are kissing her. And she wants it.

Now that she has it, she realizes that she’s wanted it for years and doesn't know if she can live without him and the way his lips feel against hers.

He wraps his arms around her, steadying her body. Her arms find their way around his neck and they’re pressed close together, so close that she can feel his rapid heartbeat against hers and it’s a comfort, reminding her that he’s human too.

They kiss like it’s a fight. She feels his need to consume her and meets it with her own. Every time he nips at her lip, presses his hand against her breast, she rises to the challenge, caressing his hardening cock, his swim trunks the only barrier between their bodies. He moans into her mouth then, the only surrender he’s allowed himself since he’s kissed her, and she grins at her victory, biting his bottom lip then soothing the impending ache with her tongue.

Only when they break apart does she realize how wrong it is. And, from the look on his face, that’s when he realizes it too.

Silence falls heavy between them. Her arms drop from his neck but his are still wrapped around her waist, steadying her in the water. Neither of them can look the other in the eye.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” he says, finally, once the silence has become too terrible to bear any longer. She looks up at him only for him to avoid her gaze immediately, like he’s ashamed of what he’s done. Ashamed of kissing her. This realization turns her blood cold. She takes a step away from him, to the shallower part of the pool, where she doesn’t have to use his body for balance.

“If we shouldn’t have done it, why did you kiss me?”

She’s angry. Angry at him for kissing her, for touching her, for making her feel alive for the first time in months. She hates herself for how much she wants it to happen again, how she would have let him fuck her if he would have asked, right here, in the pool.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not a good enough answer, Bellamy.”

Finally, he looks her in the eye and instead of the anger she expects, there’s just sadness.

“I’m sorry.”

If she thought she was angry before, she’s fucking furious now. She glares at him, her mouth in a fine line, and she considers for one horrible moment slapping him across the face.

“No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to kiss me like that and then apologize and act like it’s the worst thing you’ve ever done.”

Bellamy looks at her helplessly, as if he cannot imagine what else he could possibly do.

He turns around, unable to look her in the eye. “I can’t tell you why I did it because I don’t know why. I don’t understand anything that’s happened between us this past month. I don’t understand why I want you. I don’t understand why I want to kiss you again. I thought we were one thing and now……” he trails off, his voice raspy, broken.

The water is cold now. She starts to shiver. She wishes he would wrap his arms around her. She remembers that hug he gave her when she was thirteen and she aches for it.

“I think we’re just drunk, horny, and sad,” she offers, finally. Unexpectedly, he laughs in response.

“It’s that simple?”

His words cut her to her core and make her realize that she’s lying. Because there’s so much more to this than that but she can barely admit that to herself. Better to pretend, in the hope that her lies will become truth.

“Yeah. We both just broke up with someone we’ve been dating for a while and neither of us is handling it particularly well.”

Another laugh, this one shared. He turns around and his expression isn’t as pained. She’s glad for it. Clarke’s never known how to handle Bellamy’s tendency to punish himself intensely for every mistake he’s ever made.

“That obvious?” he says, finally, and she sees then how fucking sad he is. She wonders why she hadn’t noticed it sooner.

She shrugs. “A little. S’okay, I’m certainly not one to talk. I spent my first week here in bed.” He laughs again at that and she’s relieved that he no longer looks like he’s dying on the inside.

“Yeah, you’re right. I thought I could leave everything that happened with Echo behind in Cambridge. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.”

Suddenly, something clicks into place for her. “Is Echo one of the people you’re always talking to on the phone?” She asks, remembering the desperation in his voice, traveling through the floorboards, the night before. He hadn’t made breakfast that morning, stumbling down the stairs with dark circles under his eyes and asking if he could eat one of her Pop-Tarts. She had been shocked, given the fact that earlier that month, Bellamy had told her that he thought Pop-Tarts were poison and he couldn’t understand how she ate them all the time.

He stiffens. They’re so far away from each other now and it makes her feel lost. She had felt so complete, with his body pressed to hers.

“Yeah. Uh…We’re trying to figure shit out but it’s just…..” He trails off and Clarke realizes she’s never seen him this conflicted before. Not even when he fought with Octavia last Christmas.

“Not going well?”

His laugh this time is bitter, cold. He shakes his head and turns away from her. She wonders if they would be able to talk this frankly if they weren’t drinking. She wonders if there ever exists a world where she and Bellamy could be close without tragedy being involved. She wonders if that’s even what she wants. Her hands move without thinking and she finds herself touching her lips, stunned by the memory of how good it felt to kiss him.

“You could say that. She’s the one who asked for a break. She said she couldn’t deal with me being half in, half out anymore.”  


“I see.”

“So, we’re cool?” he asks, after a long silence has stretched out between them. She nods, only because she doesn’t know what else to do. So much has happened in the past hour but none of it has provided any clarity, any direction for their relationship to follow. If anything, they’re more fucked than they were before.

She forces a smile, because to do anything else would be to betray so much more than she’s ready to, especially with him, especially when he has someone out there who loves him like Echo does, who’s willing to give him a second chance.

“Yep. We’ll just pretend this never happened.”

Something flashes across his face in that moment. He squares his shoulders, pulls his eyes away from her. She wonders if that was the wrong thing to say. She opens her mouth to ask him but he shakes his head, gets out of the pool, before she can even get the words out.

“Works for me. Have a good night, Clarke.”

“You too.”

It’s only because he was open with her before that she’s able to notice that he’s closed off again. Like always. She gets out of the pool. They towel off, side by side, in silence. Bellamy goes into the house first, almost as if he’s desperate to get away from her. After waiting a few beats to make sure they won’t run into each other on her way in, Clarke follows.

*

Unsurprisingly, sleep evades her. It’s almost midnight by the time she’s changed out of her bathing suit and showered. She tries her best: gets into her pajamas, reads a chapter of her book, and puts on the sleep meditation YouTube video she uses when she’s really stressed out. However, no amount of preparation, of forced relaxation, can keep her from feeling his lips against hers whenever she closes her eyes or keep her from picturing the way his muscles gleamed in the moonlight, as he basically told her all about how kissing her was a terrible idea and that he’s still in love with his ex-girlfriend.

Clarke groans into her pillow. God, this is all so fucked. She’s spent the entirety of her and Bellamy’s acquaintance avoiding all of this bullshit and now she’s really stepped in it.

She considers calling Raven. It’s late, but Raven is a notorious night owl, who regularly stays up until 4am working on some coding or engineering project. However, talking to Raven about kissing Bellamy sounds like a goddamn nightmare, given the fact that Raven and Bellamy fucked two years ago after she and Clarke both broke up with Finn (once they had found out about each other and the fact that Finn thought that since he went to Boston College, Clarke went to Wellesley, and Raven went to MIT that he would be able to keep them from figuring out that he had two girlfriends). Not that she suspects that Raven still has feelings for Bellamy as Raven’s not the type of person who falls in love with one-night stands and she’s started seeing someone, the first someone since Finn, and seems to be hopelessly smitten with him.

It’s more that she knows Raven won’t pull any punches with her. That if she calls and tells her best friend what happened, Raven would merely reply, “well, what did you expect?” And while that might be correct and Clarke’s a fucking idiot for expecting Bellamy to be anything other than cryptic, difficult, and infuriatingly self-loathing, she still isn’t in a good enough place to hear it right now.

She glances over at the clock on her night table. It’s just past 2:30am, which means she’s been lying here, torturing herself, for just over two hours. Sighing, she sits up. She wishes she had brought the bottle of wine in the house with her but, she had too much on her mind to remember to grab it before running up to her room. A drink to take the edge off is just what she needs.

Suddenly, Clarke remembers the liquor kept in Kane’s study. Nice shit, the type that can knock you out pretty fast if you have enough of it. She swings her feet out of bed and into her slippers. For a moment, she considers putting on more clothing, since she’s only wearing one of her dad’s old t-shirts that comes down to her knees and a pair of underwear. She quickly banishes the thought. Bellamy’s probably asleep already. Besides, he has an uncanny ability of avoiding her after he’s been vulnerable with her.

She opens the door to her bedroom and slips outside. The house is eerily quiet and all the lights are off. She shuffles her way to Kane’s study based mostly on memory. It’s next to the library and it doesn’t take much time for her to get there. As she expected, the door’s closed and the light’s out. Clarke opens it, flicks the the light on, and slips inside.

The study’s about as nice as she remembers. Kane had shared it with Theolonius but since he hasn’t been back to the vacation house since Wells died, it’s just Kane’s now. He’s decorated it with pictures of all three families together, of Bellamy’s accomplishments, of Octavia’s smiling face, when she was still sweet and kind and not the hardened, bitter person she’s become. There’s a framed picture of her mother on his desk, next to his computer monitor. The sight reminds Clarke that her mother still thinks she’s in Wellesley and the guilt settles like a rock in her stomach.

She decides then that she needs to find the liquor, get drunk enough to fall asleep, and then get out of here as soon as possible. Clarke spots the ornate cabinet in the corner and opens the door. Different bottles of fancy old man alcohol stare at her and she quickly grabs the scotch and places it on the desk. She considers using one of the glasses, sitting on a coaster, that Kane has left on his desk expressly for this purpose but quickly decides that that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Opening the bottle with her right hand, she puts her lips to its mouth and takes as long of a swig as she can stomach, the burn on the way down simultaneously painful and soothing.

And then the door opens to reveal Bellamy.

He’s shirtless, just wearing a pair of sleep pants. His eyes widen as soon as he sees her and hers do too and she considers, for one brief, illogical moment, screaming at the top of her lungs because this is the absolute worst case scenario and it’s also the one she should have seen coming.

“Hey,” she manages, still holding the bottle of scotch in her hand. She considers taking another swig but before she can Bellamy walks toward her and plucks it from her hand and takes one himself. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and a current of longing shoots through Clarke’s body at the sight.

“Can’t sleep either?” he asks, his voice rough and raspy. She nods and takes another sip of scotch, this one smaller than the last but still hefty. She passes the bottle to him and he nods in thanks before following her lead.

Clarke can feel the alcohol working on her but it isn’t making her sleepy. All the emotions she felt before, in the pool, come rising to the surface and instead of running away from them, like she usually does, the alcohol emboldens her to face them head on.

“I don’t think we should pretend what happened in the pool never happened.” The words leave her mouth before she’s thought them through fully. Bellamy stares at her in shock, lets the bottle fall gently to the table.

“You were the one who said we should,” he says. He’s quiet, pensive. She takes a step toward him and while he stiffens in response, he doesn’t move away. He’s watching her like he doesn’t quite trust her, like he thinks she’s unpredictable. She can’t blame him as she barely trusts herself.

“I know I did. It was unrealistic.”

“So, what do you propose we do instead, Princess?” His use of her stupid childhood nickname makes her face flush, her body suddenly feeling impossibly warm. There’s something in his eyes that she doesn’t quite recognize and he takes a step toward her. They’re close now, the only thing separating them being the corner of Kane’s desk.

“I think we should be realistic. I realized we didn’t kiss just because we were drunk and sad, though that’s definitely part of it. We’re attracted to each other. It’s weird, but we’re not real siblings and we’re not even step-siblings yet so it’s not that big of deal. And I think that’s the problem. We keep acting like it’s all forbidden and that’s what makes us want it so bad,” she babbles. It’s basically everything she’s been thinking ever since they kissed and she can’t hold it in any longer.

Her fingers nervously tap against the table for a few moments and he reaches out and puts his hand on hers to silence them, a muttered “stop that,” falling from his lips. Instead of pulling his hand away immediately, he lingers. Her hand tingles as his calloused fingertips brush against her skin. Neither of them are looking at each other and she’s scared of what will happen when their eyes finally meet.

“You’re being vague again. Get to the point.” There’s an urgency in his voice and she wonders where it’s coming from. Still, she glues her eyes to the desk because she knows if she looks at him, really looks at him, she won’t be able to say what she needs to say.

“I think we should have sex. To get it out of our systems. That way, it’s not taboo anymore and we won’t want it anymore.”

Only then does she risk looking at him. His brow’s furrowed and the second their eyes meet, something like electricity fills the air, crackles with what’s forming between them. She’s scared that he’ll see the lie in her eyes, that she doesn’t truly believe the bullshit she’s telling him, that she knows it’s just a convenient excuse that she’s created to hide from the truth: that she wants him, that she’s wanted him since she learned what wanting is, that she’s not quite sure that just once will be enough. But she has to try because she needs this to end. She needs to know what’s on the other side and she thinks he does too.

His pupils dilate. His teeth worry at his lip. He doesn’t stop looking at her. His hand grasps hers roughly and she almost wants to tell him to let go because it hurts a little.

“Just once?” He asks, finally, and his voice is shot. She watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows and for one sinful, delicious moment, she considers flicking her tongue over it.

“Yep. Just so we know.”

“What if once isn’t enough?”

He takes another step toward her, presses her against the short side of Kane’s desk. Wetness pools in her underwear, threatening to drip down her thighs. Her heart’s pounding in her ears and she reaches out, presses her palm against his bare skin, and feels his doing the same.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Besides, you’re probably getting back together with Echo at the end of the summer, right? So, no matter what happens, this has an end date,” she manages, finally, after a long, excruciating silence. It’s the main justification she’s been using with herself, after all, when her brain starts to go dreamy and dumb. It prevents her from even daydreaming about a future with him, a romantic one, because it simply can’t exist. Not with Kane and Abby’s wedding happening in March, him and Echo’s simultaneously probable but definite reunion, her broken heart that still aches for Lexa. This can just be fun, scratching an itch she’s had for years but has only just started to admit to.

“Seems like you’ve thought this through.”

She blushes but nods. Surprisingly, her words, no matter how half-true they may have been, seem to have convinced him.

His hand moves from hers to caress her face. When his thumb gets close to her mouth, she flicks her tongue out to taste it and he practically growls at the sensation. Bellamy moves his thumb into her mouth, lets her flutter her tongue over it for a few moments before she closes her lips around it and sucks.

“Christ, Clarke, that’s so fucking hot.”

She opens her mouth to accept another one of his fingers. He lets her tongue dance across the pads of them before she takes his pointer finger into her mouth. It tastes like tobacco and she brushes her teeth against it, the slightest nibble, and it pulls a moan from his lips, heavy and low.

After a few more moments of her torturing him, he finally pulls his hand away from her face and lets her catch her breath. The darkness in his eyes promises more and she knows she needs to find out exactly what that is.

“Are you drunk?”

“Nope. A little buzzed, but I basically just took a shot. Takes a lot more than that to impair my judgement. You?”

“About the same.”

It starts to sink in that this is really happening, that he’s really about to fuck her. For a moment, Clarke considers if this is what she really wants. To do this, to actually do this, is something she will never be able to take back. Bellamy will be someone she sees continually for the rest of her life. In March, when her mother and Kane get married, they will be standing across from each other, as she is her mother’s maid of honor and he is Kane’s best man. She will have to stand there with the knowledge that she’s crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

No matter how sad she is, no matter how fucked up she’s become, no matter how desperate she is to feel something other than pain and boredom, she won’t be able to hide from the truth of what she’s done.

But, before she can really understand what that means, Bellamy slips his hand up her thigh, pulling up her shirt to reveal her underwear. They’re light pink and her wetness is visible, darkening the fabric. She begins to feel embarrassed, ashamed until she looks up and sees how his eyes widen and his jaw goes slack at the sight.

“Holy shit, Clarke. I can see how wet you are.”

His tone is reverent, adoring, disbelieving. He brushes a finger over where she’s aching. Even though he’s just touching her through the fabric, her pussy clenches and she lets out a small moan.

When he draws his hand away, her hips follow him reflexively. He chuckles and it’s a dark sound, one that sets her body aflame.

“I need you to ask for it.”

“Ask for what?”

“What you want me to do to you.”

She huffs, lets her nails dig into his arm a little in retaliation. While she’s always appreciated being on the receiving end of dirty talk, she’s never been comfortable doing it herself. Something about saying those words, being that vulnerable, has always scared the shit out of her. Made her worried that someone would laugh at whatever she thought sounded sexy.

“Why?” she asks and she can’t hide the frustration, both psychological and sexual, from her voice. She rubs her thighs together, desperate for any friction, and when he notices, he grabs her hip in his hand, pressing her the desk so she can’t move. She considers, for a moment, telling him to fuck off, but her panties are getting wetter, her skin even more flushed, more sensitive to touch. Somehow, he already knows exactly what turns her on, what she’s always clumsily asked of other people she’s slept with but none of them have gotten it quite as right as he has. The fucking bastard.

“Because, I’ve been thinking about how hot it would be to hear you beg for me to make you come ever since you showed up here,” he says, his voice calm, even. Whatever nerves he may have had earlier are gone now. He’s become this version of himself that she’s only seen glimpses of before, whenever she saw him sneak girls up to his room or slip his hand up Echo’s thigh in the middle of family dinner when he thought no one was looking.

She lets out a little gasp of surprise at his words. To think he could be feeling anything like she has felt is unthinkable. Her heart stutters in her chest and the nerves that she was feeling before, when he first asked, multiple.

“Really?”

Tenderness softens his face. He soothes his thumb over her hipbone, draws her out of her shell a little. “Yes, really. So, can you do that for me, Clarke?”

She nods, biting her lip. She realizes she definitely isn’t buzzed anymore because, if she was, this would be easy, like sucking his fingers into her mouth had been.

“Make me come. Please.”

Her voice doesn’t sound like hers, so rough with lust and longing. She flicks her eyes up to his, to see if she did a good job, and his gaze is ravenous, eyes all pupil, no iris. Before she can ask for reassurance, he crashes his mouth onto hers, and she almost wants to cry because it feels so good, so natural, to be kissing him here, like this. She fists her hands into his hair, pulling him closer, and he nips hard at her bottom lip, just on the edge of too much.

“Good girl,” he breathes against her lips when he pulls away.

He slips his fingers into her underwear. An unholy sound escapes her lips when the rough of his thumb finally makes contact with her aching clit. She falls forward, her head resting on his chest and her hand gripping his shoulder.

“You okay, Princess? What do you need?”

“More.”

“More what?”

His thumb’s still pressed against her but it isn’t enough. She squirms, desperate for friction.

“Rubbing. In circles. Not too hard,” she manages. He presses a kiss to the side of her head and then finally gives her what she wants, his fingers working deftly against her. Her hips jerk and she keens, high-pitched and sweet, as he whispers dirty hot encouragements in her ear, strings of words that would normally make her blush but when Bellamy’s saying them to her, they make her feel powerful.

It takes her an almost embarrassingly short time to come, so keyed up and sensitive. The softest ache builds in her until it’s almost painful and right when it’s too much, when she almost begs him to stop, he sinks one of his fingers into her pussy and she comes, her knees buckling a little and her head going fuzzy. Bellamy holds her up, his words a dirty mantra against the side of her head: “yes, you’re so good for me, so fucking wet, Clarke, can’t wait to fuck you.”

As she comes down, he kisses her through it, his mouth soft against hers. When they pull apart, Clarke pulls her eyes away from him, not wanting him to see how wrecked she probably looks. He doesn’t let her, catches her chin in his hand and turning her face so she has to look at him. “That was fucking hot, Princess,” he murmurs and he presses another kiss, quick and chaste, to her lips. His finger’s is still inside her and he moves it a little, like a test, and she trembles, still so sensitive.

“What’re you doing?”

“Getting you ready for my cock. Do you think you can handle two?”

God, she cannot handle the way his voice sounds wrapped around words like this, so rough and raw. It goes straight to her pussy, make her even wetter, and he definitely notices. His face goes slack with awe in response as he continues to finger fuck her, slow and deep.

“Two’s okay.”

When he pushes his second finger into her, Clarke’s whole body feels overloaded with sensation. “Holy shit,” she cries out, bracing herself on his shoulder again. Bellamy presses a soothing kiss to her forehead, picks up her leg and wraps it around his waist so she opens a bit more. “You good?” he asks, both fingers resting at her entrance, waiting for her cue and as soon as she nods, her body still trembling a little, he starts fucking into her again. It hurts a little, at first, but her body quickly gets used to it and before long, she’s moaning something that sounds like his name, over and over again, until the word loses its meaning and starts to just sound like a random assortment of consonants and volumes.

“Can you do another one?” She looks up at him and sees such softness and care in his face that her heart stutters in her chest. A small fire takes the place of her heart, a delicate thing, as she sees something more than lust in his eyes but she’s too scared to think about more, realize what else might be there.

“Yeah, think so. And then, you’ll fuck me?”

Suddenly, the softness has gone from his face, wolfish lust replacing it. It hurts her a little, to not be looked at, like that, anymore but her heart returns to normal and her head doesn’t feel funny anymore so she figures it must be for the best.

“Yeah, how do you want it?”

As he speaks, he eases his third finger into her. The initial stretch burns a little but as soon as she gets used to it, it feels so fucking sweet that she finds herself grinding down on his hand as he fucks up into her. It’s hard to form coherent thoughts when he’s making her feel so good, the knuckle of one of his fingers repeatedly brushing against the most sensitive spot inside her.

Thankfully, she doesn’t have to think too hard because, in the month they’ve shared a home, Clarke’s been tormented with visions of all the places in this home where she’d love for him to fuck her, dirty and rough. She conjures up the fantasy she used to get off the night before, that just happened to involve this very study.

“From behind. Bent over the desk.”

She can’t believe she’s managed to say those words until she hears them leaving her mouth. Clarke flicks her eyes up to catch Bellamy’s expression and the way he’s looking at her, with something like wonder in his eyes, is too good to hide from, no matter how vulnerable she may feel.

They pause for a moment, staring at each other. Clarke reaches out, holds his face in his hand. She’s never let herself look at him for this long ever before. She smooths her thumb over the scar above his lip and his eyelids flutter at the sensation. She wonders if this is the most open she’s let herself be with someone. She wonders if that’s sad, because she’s not even being that honest with him. Just like everyone else, Bellamy doesn’t really know anything about what’s happened to her this year. How she finally realized she’s not able to run from her demons anymore, that she can’t repress everything, that eventually she will have to feel everything she’s been avoiding since her father died then Wells died and then she realized that life might not ever turn out quite right for her, that she might be one of those people who just suffers forever with no reprieve insight and maybe that’s what she deserves, for letting herself become this, a shell of a person, just because she’s so scared of losing control.

Before she can say anything, he spins her around and places her elbows on the desk a foot or so from the edge. He then eases her underwear down her legs and tosses them to the side. “Spread your legs,” he orders and she obeys.

“Stay like this. I’m gonna go get a condom.”

Bellamy leaves the room. She hears his hurried footsteps echoing through the empty house and he runs down the hall and upstairs to his room.

A minute or so later, he reappears, a triumphant grin on his face and a gold foil packet in his hand.

“God, you look so fucking sexy like this,” he says, taking her in. She flushes. Even with her sleep shirt on, she’s pretty sure this is the most naked she’s ever felt.

She looks over her shoulder and she’s greeted by one of the hottest things she’s ever seen: Bellamy Blake, jerking himself back to hardness while staring at her dripping pussy. When he catches her, he doesn’t look away, his gaze totaling. She pulls her eyes away, face feeling white hot as she tries to comprehend how the fuck this is happening.

The sound of him ripping the condom open brings her back to reality. He rolls it onto his dick and then, suddenly, she feels him rubbing against her entrance. For a moment, he just slicks himself in her wetness and she arches her back, desperate for more friction. She hears his responding chuckle, low and gravelly, before he places his hand on her lower-back, effectively rendering her motionless.

“What do you want, Princess?”

This time, she doesn’t stutter, doesn’t get nervous, doesn’t balk at the very idea. “For you to fuck me,” she says and his responding intake of breath makes her feel electric.

He goes slow, pushing his cock into her gradually. He’s long and thick inside her and she has to grit her teeth a little at the stretch of it. “Fuck, you’re so tight,” he groans, his fingers digging into her hips as he feeds her more of his cock, centimeter by centimeter.

The feeling of him entering her is overwhelming. Clarke scrabbles at the desk for purchase, soft breathy sounds leaving her lips as strain slowly gives way to pleasure. He takes his time, not rushing her through it. When he finally bottoms out, she’s so overcome by sensation and fullness and him and she keens, her knees trembling a little.

“Holy shit,” she breathes when he starts to thrust into her, slow and deep. He presses one hand onto her hip, the other resting on her back, keeping her in place. She pushes her ass against him, a silent plea for him to go faster. He picks up on it, his hold on her hip turning bruising as he starts to pound into her.

“You like that?” he asks and when she opens her mouth to answer, all that comes out is a broken moan as he drags his cock slow and dirty over her g-spot. He’s so fucking deep inside her that she can’t quite tell where he ends and she begins and the sounds he’s making, so rough and raw, make her wish that she could see his face, see how wrecked he is, how she’s ruined him just as much as he’s ruined her.

Already, she feels her orgasm building, her body trembling with the effort of holding it back. “You close?” he asks and she nods, gripping the desk hard and leaving nail indentations in the wood. She starts to meet his thrusts and she feels the way his body shudders in pleasure in response, how his movements are starting to get a little bit more stuttered, more frantic. “What do you need, Princess? Do you need to come?”

All she can do is whine in frustration, hitting her knuckles against the desk. “Please, Bellamy. Please touch my clit,” she finds herself saying, though she can’t really remember the start of the sentence or when she even thought of it, and he groans in response, sounding just as far gone as she does. “Yeah, I got you. Gonna make you come so hard. Gonna make you feel so good,” he replies and his hand moves from her lower back to her clit, so sensitive it’s almost painful.

He rubs circles against her in tempo with how hard he’s fucking her and she hears now the noise of the desk scrapping against the wooden floor, the wet sounds of their bodies meeting, the way he’s panting her name, over and over again, and she almost wants to cry at how good it feels, how right fucking him is, how she never wants this to end but she knows it has to. He’s grinding so sweet inside her that she finds herself talking again, saying words she has never been able to say to anyone else, no matter how hot the sex was. “Fuck, Bell, I’m so close, fuck,” she trails off, overcome by a particular powerful wave of pleasure as his thumb’s movements against her clit quicken.

“Yeah, you got it, babe. What do you need?”

The words fall from her mouth without thinking, coming from the darkest, deepest parts of her. “Pull my hair. Hard.”

The broken way he says “Christ, Clarke, that’s so hot, you’re so fucking hot,” sets her skin aflame. He moves his hand from her back to the ends of her long hair, spread over her back. He wraps his fist around it and then, right when she is so close to coming that she’s quivering with pleasure, almost at the point of overstimulated, he pulls, exactly as hard as she wants him to. Her back arches, her whole body tensing, and then she comes, the most perfect ache spreading through her pussy and her whole body until she’s trembling with the ecstasy of it.

Her elbows are going wonky beneath her and just when they’re about to go out, Bellamy reaches the arm that was pulling her around her chest, wrapping it around her so she doesn’t collapse onto the desk. He groans, a sound more animal than man, and then he drives his cock deep inside her and comes, his voice so far gone that she just barely recognizes it as his.

They both fall onto the desk. His body is a comforting weight above hers and, in that moment, she feels safer than she has in a long time. They stay like that for a little too long, their bodies sticking together from sweat. Only then does he lift himself off of her and she mourns the loss almost immediately.

He pauses to dispose of the condom and pull up his pajama pants. Then, she feels strong arms around her, helping her up. She’s a little woozy on her feet and he lets her hold his arm for balance as she turns around.

For a moment, they just look at each other. His expression doesn’t quite make sense to her and she’s sure hers is about the same. He picks her underwear off the floor and she slides them back on, both of them painfully quiet.

Once the afterglow has worn off, Clarke worries that this will end the same as their kiss before, in the pool, that he will be ashamed of what he’s done and pull away from her. She doesn’t know if her heart can take it, especially after she saw so much tenderness in his eyes when he held her, felt the care he took in making her come. When she sneaks a glance at him, he’s staring at the desk, as if he’s still trying to process what’s happened between them.

Finally, he breaks the uneasy silence that’s settled between them. “I was right.”

She looks up at him, her expression incredulous as she tries to figure out what he could possibly mean.

“Right about what?”

He meets her gaze and a wild feeling fills her whole body and, in that moment, she realizes that this hasn’t actually solved anything. If anything, it’s just made it worse.

“Once isn’t going to be enough.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and for your sweet comments!!! I love writing this story so much and I am so glad that it's found an audience and that people are enjoying it as well. Let me know what y'all think about this chapter. :-)


	4. Part IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Frank discussions about depression.

She realizes now why this was a terrible idea.

Because she knows he’s right. That she can’t live in a world where she knows what his lips feel like against hers, the exact timbre of what his voice sounds like when he comes, and the exact way that his cock stretches her, and not fuck him again. At least not when they’re living in the same home, together, with nothing else to do.

But, is it really the worst thing in the world? For her to let this moment become a bigger one, so large it ceases to be a moment, something that they can both shrug off because it only happened once, and let it become an actuality? She tries to remember the last time she did anything that counted in a real way. She tries to remember the last time she felt as good as she did when he saw his eyes go dark and heavy when he lifted up her shirt and saw how wet she was for him. She comes up empty.

“Bellamy…” Clarke starts, without knowing where the sentence is going. He raises an eyebrow, swallows hard.

“What? Do you disagree with me?” His tone has a hard edge to it, one whose origin she doesn’t quite understand. She hadn’t expected him to actually give a shit.

“You know I don’t.” She wishes she could keep the note of pleading out of her voice. She glances up at him and whatever frustration he seems to have with her softens. He seems to realize how tired she is, how tired he must be.

“We should talk about this. Tomorrow. Once we’ve gotten some sleep.”

She nods. Her heart hammers in her chest and she realizes now that she doesn’t know how to act around him anymore, especially when he’s like this. There’s a tension, an urgency about him. The distance of them feels larger and she wonders if it’s going to become impossible to cross, like it had felt when she had first showed up here.

They don’t kiss again. She thinks it’s because they’re both scared of what will happen if they do. Instead, after, once they finish cleaning up and shut the door behind them and Clarke goes to leave, Bellamy catches her wrist in her hand, pulling her back.

She looks up at him. His hair is disheveled and his lips are swollen. There’s something like danger in his eyes and she sucks in a breath. “Tomorrow,” he confirms and all she can do is nod, her heart caught in her throat.

After a moment, he lets her wrist go and they part ways, going to their separate rooms. Clarke finds herself being a little disappointed that he didn’t invite her to join him in his bed. Immediately, she pushes the longing down, not wanting to go down the path it leads to because she knows even now that it’s nowhere good.

Clarke slips into her room and then into the adjoining bathroom to brush her teeth. Her brain’s on auto-pilot and she doesn’t realize she’s done until she’s spit out the toothpaste and is rinsing her toothbrush. It’s only then that she lets herself look at herself in the mirror.

Her appearance doesn’t reflect how different she feels. She wishes there was a tangible reminder of what Bellamy has done to her, what they’ve done to each other. She finds herself lifting her hair, checking for hickeys. There aren’t any. Suddenly, she’s struck by the memory of the pressure of his hands on her hips. She lifts up her shirt to reveal bruises shaped like his fingers fixed to her skin.

She places her fingers against the bruises and presses. The pain pulls a moan from her throat, deep and low. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she doesn’t recognize the hungry creature staring back at her.

After staring at herself for a little too long, she gets in bed and falls asleep the second her head hits the pillow.

*  
She wakes up with undefined anxiety brewing in her chest. Her sheets are drenched with sweat, her body sticky and clammy. Her heart’s thudding painfully hard. She remembers, distantly, the a ringing sound, but can’t quite place if she heard it in a dream or in real life.

Clarke sits up, glances over at the clock that sits on her nightstand. A fluorescent red “9:45am” blinks back at her. She’s only been asleep for around five hours, so it’s far too early for her to be hit with her typical “I can’t believe I sleep this late” panic.

When she reaches for her phone, she’s greeted by notifications - dozens of them. Suddenly, it comes back to her - the way her phone has been buzzing or ringing since 6am but she’s been so exhausted that every single time she’s been woken up by it, she immediately falls back asleep. The anxiety from before constricts her throat when she realizes they’re all from Raven and she’s definitely pissed.

With a fluttering pulse, Clarke reads the progression: how Raven started with a “hey, just checking in, haven’t heard from you in a bit” sometime last night, when Clarke had been in the pool with Bellamy, and then, as the hours pass, the texts become increasingly more desperate and furious. Around midnight, Raven texted again: “hey dude, I get that you need time on your own but it’s been a month - can you at least confirm that you’re still alive?” Then, at 3am, another: “seriously, Clarke? I haven’t heard from you in two weeks. I’m starting to get worried.”

There’s a break between 3am and 7am - where Raven seemed to have finally fallen asleep, but by 7:30am it starts up again: “Clarke, I swear to fucking god, if you’re dead, I’m going to be so mad.” And then, around 8am, 12 hours since the first time Raven texted her and received no response, she seems to have finally broken down: “I’m going to our favorite brunch place today at 11:30am. If you don’t meet me there, I’m going to call your mom and tell her that you’re not in Wellesley and she needs to check on you.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Clarke shoots out of bed. She knows that this isn’t an idle threat. Raven’s never been that type of person. She’s threatened to get Abby involved before, when Clarke’s had periods of not leaving her apartment for weeks. She dresses in a hurry. Their favorite brunch place is in Cambridge and it’ll take her an hour and a half to drive there so she has just enough time but she knows that if she’s even a second late, Raven will pull the trigger and call her mom.

She rushes out of her room and down the hall. The light in the kitchen’s off, Bellamy’s probably still asleep. She considers for a moment writing him a note, letting him know where she is, but she doesn’t feel like she has enough time and there’s too much on the line.

Grabbing her keys from one of the hooks next to the door, Clarke flies out of the house and down the driveway, to her car. Her hand’s shaking as she pulls the car door open and slides in. The car thankfully starts when she slides the key into the ignition and she has a half of tank of gas left, from when she drove to Cape Cod a month ago.

With trembling fingers she plugs the address of their brunch place into her GPS. It says she’ll get there exactly at 11:25am. Clarke sucks in a breath and pushes her foot against the gas pedal. She prays that she makes it there in time. She can’t handle her mother finding out what’s going on, especially from Raven.

The drive to Cambridge is a blur. Clarke’s body goes on auto-pilot, mindlessly following the GPS’s directions. Her mind is a whirlwind of worst-case scenarios and every breath she takes is pained with how constricted her throat is from panic.

When her GPS announces her arrival, her heart jumps. She almost cries with relief when she glances over at the clock and sees that it’s only 11:23am. Her pulse calms as she parallel parks in a spot across the street from the diner that her and Raven frequent during the school year. Throwing the car door open, she practically sprints across the street and then into the restaurant.

Clarke doesn’t know how to feel when she sees Raven. Their friendship has been strained for the better part of this year, mostly consisting of Raven practically breaking down Clarke’s apartment door at least once a month whenever Clarke fell off the face of the earth and into a depressive stupor that made leaving her apartment seem truly impossible. She can tell that Raven, like everyone else, is getting tired of her shit.

When she sees her, an unexpected feeling of longing fills her chest. She misses when she could just be happy to see Raven, when they spent their time together just catching up and goofing around instead of constantly wadding through depressing bullshit. Clarke searches her memory for the last time they were able to have a normal conversation and comes up empty.

She announces her presence with a cough. Raven looks up from her phone and leaps to her feet. Clarke gasps in surprise when Raven throws her arms around her and wraps her in a tight hug. “Don’t scare me like that ever again or I’ll kill you,” she mutters against Clarke’s head before letting her go.

Clarke forces a laugh in response and slips into the seat across from Raven. It’s simultaneously too humid and too cold in the restaurant and sweat drips down her forehead.

Raven has already ordered a her a black coffee and this gesture of friendship makes her want to sink into her seat until she disappears.

“You’re not gonna tell my mom, right?” Clarke manages, after a long, painful silence. Raven’s eyebrows jump up in shock and then anger flashes across her face, hot and mean.

“No, I’m not gonna tell your mom. But, for fuck’s sake, would it kill you to pick up your phone?”

Clarke frowns, crossing her arms across her chest. She knows Raven has a point but she doesn’t have enough strength to contemplate what that means for her and how she’s living her life. “You know I’m shitty with my phone,” she replies, her voice small and pitiful. She wishes she could muster some more fire, so more life, but she can’t seem to find it within herself. In fact, it’s hard to find anything other than indifference. She fixes her eyes to the menu for a moment, as an excuse to hide from Raven’s expression, which she’s sure is incredulous. They’ve had this conversation so many times that Clarke already knows that this is the worst it’s ever went and there’s no way it’s going to get better.

“Yeah, well, stop being shitty. I was worried about you,” Raven says. She reaches out, flips Clarke’s menu closed. “You’re getting the blueberry pancakes with bacon and home fries. With whipped cream. Don’t pretend you’re getting anything different,” she adds and then she waves the waitress over. She orders for both of them and asks for more coffee. Clarke is simultaneously furious and thankful. It’s a particularly annoying set of emotions to have at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke mutters, ashamed. She flicks her eyes up to look at Raven. She hates the pity she sees in her best friend’s eyes but she can’t exactly hide from the fact that she deserves it. Because Raven’s seen her at her absolute worst this year and has been pretty good about not talking to Clarke about it, because she knows by now that that’ll just make Clarke shut down and avoid her for weeks.

Raven sighs. “Just…do you get why I would be worried about you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

For a moment, Clarke doesn’t know which of them is more uncomfortable. The air between them is sticky with discomfort. She’s been avoiding this conversation with Raven for so goddamn long she doesn’t know what to do now that it’s here, that there’s no running from it.

“Are you doing okay?”

Clarke shrugs, not knowing what to say. It’s the same answer she’s had for the past year. “I guess,” she manages, after a long, heavy pause. She can feel Raven rolling her eyes without even looking at her.

“Clarke, how many times have we had this conversation?”

“Raven, really. I’m sorry for worrying you but I’m fine. Really. Yeah, I’ve had a hard year. But, it’s fine. I’m fine,” Clarke manages, after a long silence. She’s said this same thing a thousand times to Raven, to Harper, to Lexa, to her professors, to herself.

She can tell Raven wants to believe her, that she wants to never have to have this conversation again. That’s why they keep ending up here, in this infinite loop of denial and bullshit.

“You know, it’s okay to not be fine. Especially after the shit you’ve gone through,” Raven says. Clarke raises an eyebrow. This is a new tactic. Usually, Raven will just leave Clarke alone after they get to the part of their conversation where Clarke refuses to admit that she isn’t fine and will not be told otherwise.

“Yeah, I know that.”

Raven doesn’t seem to be buying it but doesn’t push her further. At that moment, their food shows up and Clarke, though not especially hungry, is thankful for the distraction.

“Are you sick of being alone at the vacation house yet?”

Clarke almost chokes on her half-chewed mouthful of pancake. Fuck, she forgot that Raven has no idea that Bellamy’s at the house with her. She had considered telling her, in the few text messages she actually did send. But, whenever she started typing the messages out, she would become worried that they would reveal too much, betraying the fact that the once repressed current of sexual attraction that’s always existed between them had been coming to the surface.

“I’m not alone, actually. Bellamy’s spending the summer there too. He’s working on his dissertation.”

Raven pauses, forkful of waffle halfway to her mouth. “Bellamy’s there? And you two haven’t killed each other yet?”

Clarke blushes. “No, we’ve actually been getting along okay,” she manages.

She realizes now how ridiculous that must sound to Raven, who has been around for some of Clarke and Bellamy’s worst blow-outs, when she was a freshman in college. She can barely remember what any of them were about now, how they mainly just pointed to the discontent that existed between the two of them, the way that they couldn’t figure out quite how to act around each other now that they were older. She remembers how one of them, perhaps the worst one, was about Clarke being pissed off at him for sleeping with Raven, though even while they were fighting about it, she still didn’t quite understand why.

Raven doesn’t seem to buy it but doesn’t push her further on the issue. They continue eating in silence. Clarke takes a sip of coffee, tries to remember how to interact with people in a way that resembles normalcy, in the hope that such a performance will get Raven off of her case.

“So, how’s post-grad going?”

Raven wrinkles her nose at the question. It’s clear it’s one that she’s been asked ad nauseam since she graduated from MIT in early May. She pushes a bit of waffle around her plate for a few moments before responding.

“Weird. Sinclair kept me on as a research assistant over the summer so it’s like the real world hasn’t started yet.”

One thousand questions bubble up in Clarke’s throat but she knows she can’t ask them because they would reveal too much, all the secrets she’s been keeping from Raven and everyone else she knows, sometimes even herself. She wants to ask her if life makes more sense after you’ve graduated, if it all seems worth it. If, graduating makes you feel whole, complete. If it makes you figure out what you’re doing with your life. If, it will keep Clarke from going even farther adrift than she already has.

Instead she just smiles and nods. She scours her brain for possible topics for discussion and finds the perfect one: something that’ll take the focus off her (because she knows Raven is seconds away from asking her what her post-grad plans are and she knows this question will cause the shatter her) and also make Raven so flustered that maybe Clarke can get out of here without being asked any other personal questions.

“How’s working with Zeke?”

As Clarke predicted, Raven immediately blushes and acts like she’s real interested in the cracked laminate of the dining room table.

“Weird. We had to tell Sinclair that we were dating. I could tell he was real pleased but also felt like he had to act like my dad. Like, he really dropped his usual professionalism bullshit and said: ‘Zeke, I know you’re one of my students too but if you break her heart, I’ll make your life a living hell.’ He laughed afterward and pretended he was kidding but Zeke was definitely shook.”

She laughs at Raven’s story, thankful for the opportunity to stop thinking about herself and her own bullshit for a moment. Zeke and Raven had met in Sinclair’s lab at the beginning of Raven’s senior year. Their relationship started out contentious, as Zeke, as one of Sinclair’s PhD students, was the lab manager and was technically in charge of Raven. Instead of listening to him, Raven spent most of her time trying to prove that he was doing everything wrong. Eventually, after spending enough late nights together, they realized their competition was partially fueled by attraction and they’ve been together ever since.

“Does he still boss you around?”

“Yeah, but only in bed.”

“Raven!”

Clarke throws her napkin at Raven in shock. She catches it, cackling. “What? I thought you were dead, the least you can do is listen to my gross sex jokes,” she replies, smirking. Clarke rolls her eyes, her neck suddenly feeling very hot. She doesn’t like the way her mind flashed immediately to Bellamy, and the way the gravel of his voice sunk into her name when he thrust inside her for the first time.

“I really am sorry. I’ll be better about texting. I promise.”

“Yeah, you better. I don’t want to have to keep threatening to tell your mom about shit she should probably just know about anyway.”

She frowns, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. Raven does have a point and it’s one that Clarke’s been ignoring for what feels like years. To be quite honest, she can’t even remember the last time she told her mother the truth about her life, what it really consisted of.

“I’m going to tell her. Eventually,” she manages, more to herself than to Raven.

“Well, you should do it sooner rather than later.”

Raven waves over the waitress and asks for two to-go boxes for their left-overs. Neither of them ate much of their food. They split the check evenly and collect their belongings in silence. When they walk together to the door of the diner, the same uneasiness from before has settled between them.

They pause in front of Raven’s car, parked right outside the restaurant. The surrounding area is painfully quiet, most of Cambridge’s inhabitants elsewhere for the summer. Raven clicks her fob and and the doors unlock. Clarke knows there’s something she should say right now but can’t figure quite what it is.

Before she can say anything, Raven pulls Clarke into another hug, this one rib-crushing. After a few shocked moments, Clarke finds it in herself to hug her best friend back. She feels how much Raven was worried about her in their embrace and it makes her feel horrible.

“I meant what I said before, Clarke. It’s okay that you’re having a hard time. And I know you hate talking to people about your problems but maybe it’s time that you do.”

They drift apart as Raven speaks. An ugly defensiveness rears up in Clarke and she frowns, looks down. “Are you saying I need to talk to a therapist?” Her voice goes shrill at the end of her sentence. Raven rolls her eyes and pushes Clarke’s shoulder.

“I don’t know. I’m not a mental health professional. I do think that you could benefit from telling at least one person what’s going on with you.”

Clarke’s struck by the realization that Raven has outgrown her. The fact that both of them hated talking about their feelings used to be what bond them together, after all that bullshit with Finn went down. They would joke about it, call themselves unemotional robots and then pour each other another glass of wine. But, ever since Raven’s started dating Zeke, she’s changed. She doesn’t talk much about their relationship but Clarke knows Raven well enough to know that there’s something different about them, about the space created by their love.

She’s watched the way they’ve created a world for just the two of them, how when Raven makes a passing comment about her mother’s alcoholism or her father’s absence, Zeke gives her a knowing look, rubs her back. Like he knows the whole story, more than Clarke ever has. She wishes she wasn’t such a small person that she didn’t feel jealous, like Zeke stole something away from her by being the person who finally cracked Raven’s hardened exterior.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

Raven smiles at Clarke and it makes her heart break. “Good. Love you, kid. Drive safe. Text me,” she says quickly before slipping into her car and close the door. Then, she starts her car and peels off in the direction of her apartment, leaving Clarke alone in an empty town.

*

Raven’s words bounce around Clarke’s head the whole drive home. She tries to blast her music loud enough that she can’t hear herself think but that just makes it worse. Momentarily, when she sees a bar on the side of the highway halfway back to Cape Cod, she considers turning into the parking lot and getting so drunk that she’ll forget all about today and then maybe just take a cab the rest of the way home.

At another turn, one closer to the vacation house, she flirts with the idea of turning around and driving all the way to Boston, to Lexa’s apartment, and asking Lexa if she will take her back, just so this pain and loneliness will end and she won’t have to spend all of her time thinking about what it is about her that makes her so goddamn unlovable. Then, she won’t have to talk to anyone because her problem will be solved. To calm her racing heartbeat, she drives around the Cape for an extra hour and a half, trying to get her head on straight.

She drives along the road close to the ocean. Rolls down her window and lets the sea air waft into her car. Sticks her head out the window and tastes the salt on her tongue. She’s reminded that part of her thought that going to the vacation house would heal her, solve all of her problems. “Stupid fucking idea,” she mutters to herself. There’s no escape, she’s realizing now. No matter where she goes, her problems still follow her. If anything, they’re getting worse. She can tell that Raven’s losing faith in her.

Worse, she can tell she’s losing faith in herself. When she had left Wellesley, she had been so sure of her ability to right herself, that all she needed was some time alone, far away from everything that reminded her of Lexa and her failures. It’s been a month and she thought she would be better by now, that the weight she had been carrying would evaporate into thin air once she had seen the ocean and been reminded of the good that exists in this world.

No such miracle has occurred. If anything, she feels heavier. If she tried to swim now, she knows she would sink, because she doesn’t know if she has it in her to try to float anymore.

She wishes she was big enough to accept Raven’s advice. She knows that if she calls her right now and says she wants to talk, her friend will be there for her and listen to her. Hell, she’ll probably even be proud of her. But, the very action makes Clarke’s throat constrict, her pulse jitter. Talking to someone about it will make it all true and she’ll no longer be able to hide from what she’s become, a creature so small, so fearful, that she can barely recognizes herself sometimes when she looks in the mirror.

Finally, after realizing that driving around alone isn’t really making her feel better, she makes her way to the house. It’s almost 4pm now and she’s been gone for over six hours.

Clarke pulls her car into the driveway and turns it off. Bellamy’s car’s still there, in the same spot it was yesterday. Something in her goes cold when she realizes he hadn’t even gone looking for her, hadn’t texted her to ask where she was.

She was gone for a while. He had to have noticed.

But, of course, he doesn’t care. She bites down the urge to scream, angry and loud and broken,  
because she nows know that she’s a fucking idiot for thinking what happened between them last night would change anything between them. He’s probably thankful that she hasn’t been around all day, just so he doesn’t to look his mistake in the face. Hell, he’s probably back together with Echo already.

After torturing herself with the meanest thoughts she can muster, Clarke gets out of the car and locks it behind her. The door to the house is unlocked so she opens it and slips inside. It’s quiet, which probably means he’s working in the library.

Clarke walks into the kitchen to put her leftovers away. Belatedly, after closing the fridge, she realizes that there’s a plate sitting on the breakfast bar, at her usual spot. It has two eggs, sunny side up, along with four pieces of bacon and a slice of sourdough toast, with butter and her favorite jam, strawberry, on top. A skin has formed over the eggs and the bacon’s filmy with fat that’s been sitting for at least a couple hours.

The realization that Bellamy made breakfast for her, expecting them to share a meal together this morning, is a dull ache, pushing against the front of her skull. Her back’s to the kitchen’s entryway and she hears him enter the kitchen before she sees him.

“Where were you?”

His voice’s cold but there’s a tremor beneath it. “Nowhere,” she manages, dumbly, pushing at one of the egg’s with her fingertip.

Her answer sets something off in him. He walks up behind her and pulls the plate out from underneath her hand. Before she can say anything, he throws the food in the trash and puts the plate in the sink. The sound of it crashing against the metal of the sink’s basin sets her teeth on edge.

“If you regret what happened last night, you can just tell me. You don’t have to avoid me.”

It takes her a beat to process his words and even once she’s had a chance to think about them, they don’t quite make sense. He’s staring out the window above the sink in a way that almost feels aggressive.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Clarke, you haven’t left the house on your own in a month and you just so happen to decide to leave the day after we fuck. It’s fine. I get it. We don’t have to talk about it. We’ll just pretend it never happened, right? Like you said last night.”

He starts washing the dishes. Steam rises up from the sink and she can tell the water’s too hot. His hands are turning bright pink from the heat. He doesn’t seem to care, his movements mechanical.

She’s heard this edge to his voice before. It’s the same tone he’s reserved for Marcus, whenever he accidentally made Bellamy feel unwelcome with a usually well-intentioned gesture, like telling Bellamy that he could send him to boarding school, if he really wanted, or saying that he didn’t mind when Bellamy spent the summer with friends instead of family. She hasn’t heard it since he was a teenager and it sounds a little out of place with how grown-up he is now.

Her heart drops into her stomach. God, she’s really fucking up everything lately, isn’t she? She realizes that she’s in danger of losing him and it hits her that if she loses him, she has nothing. To not lose him, she has to admit the truth, tell him where she really is, because she knows him well enough to know that he won’t believe anything else. A hurt Bellamy is a paranoid Bellamy, who sees threats around every corner. He will be able to detect the slightest trembling in her voice, the smallest lie. However, she can’t tell him. To do so will be to admit everything and to reveal the softest parts of her underbelly. She digs her fingernails into the skin of her palm and relishes distraction provided by the pain.

“No, Bellamy, that’s not it at all. I promise.”

“Clarke, it’s fine. I said I got it. We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

His tone is biting and it’s clear he considers the conversation over. He finishes washing the dishes and puts them on the drying rack. Squaring his shoulders, Bellamy goes to leave.

Clarke jumps in front of him and blocks the door. His stony expression goes from forced nonchalance to fury in a second. She considers for a moment if she’ll ever be scared of Bellamy, if a world exists where she believes that he can hurt her.

“Let me leave the kitchen. We’re good. Everything can go back to normal.”

She fixes him with a glare, presses her finger into his chest so he can’t move. “Oh my god, will you stop the self-loathing Bellamy shtick already? I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I was leaving but that’s because it had nothing to do with you. At all. I promise.”

His eyes widen in shock for a moment but, quickly, he schools his expression into the pissed off mask that he wore ages 12 to 18. “Why should I believe you? All you’ve done is lie or dodge my questions since you got here. You know about what went down with me and Echo but I don’t know jack shit about what happened to you, other than the fact that it’s turned you into a shell of a person.”

“Shell of a person” feels a knife stabbing her where she’s the most tender. She pulls her finger away from his chest. Immediately, Bellamy realizes he’s gone too far. “Fuck…sorry…I didn’t mean-“

“No, it’s fine. It’s the truth, isn’t it?” She laughs and it’s a sad, broken sound. “I left because Raven threatened to tell my mom I wasn’t in Wellesley if I didn’t meet her for brunch. She thought that something had happened to me, since I hadn’t returned her texts for a while. I was panicking when I left so I didn’t leave you a note. I’m sorry. It had nothing to do with you or what happened last night. I mean it,” she says, her eyes fixed to the floor.

The silence between them is heavy. His brow’s furrowed like she’s stumped him. She knows he’s always prepared for the reason behind everything to be that he’s terrible that he’s never known what to do when it’s something else. She’s seen it in action in most of his interactions with Octavia, especially during the past year. She wonders if he’s like this with Echo too, or if it’s just something special that family gets to see.

“Why did Raven think something had happened to you?”

His voice is soft, disbelieving. Her throat feels thick and hot, like it always does before she cries and it’s a struggle to get the words out but she knows she has to.

“Because, how I am right now, it’s nothing new. It’s how I’ve been for a while. I barely went to class this year. I spent most of my time locked in my apartment, watching Netflix, eating cereal for every meal. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know when it started. It’s just like…” she trails off, struggling to find the right words. “It feels like the my legs fell out from under me and I can’t get back up. And…I think after someone has been like that for a while, people start to think the worst.”

It’s the first time she’s admitted this, any of it. Hell, it’s the first time she’s even tried to put together the words to describe how she’s felt this past year. Her eyes sting and she rubs at them with her hands. When she looks up at him, his mouth’s parted in surprise.

Something in her shatters when their eyes meet.

He gathers her up in his arms, pulls her close. Holds her like that for a while. Tears slide down her face and before she can wipe them away, Bellamy places his hand on her back, keeps her in place. “It’s okay, Clarke. You’re okay,” he murmurs into her hair. His mouth lingers there, like he’s going to kiss the top of her head, but he doesn’t. His voice, his permission, opens the floodgates and she sobs so hard she almost can’t breath. He holds her through it, slips his hand up the back of her shirt and rubs soothing shapes against her skin.

She doesn’t know how long he holds her for, just that he only lets go of her when she’s ready. Before she can ask, he grabs some paper towel for her and hands it to her so she can wipe her eyes and blow her nose. Like a parent, he reaches out when she’s done with it, takes it from her, and throws it in the trash.

“Do you want to talk about it more?”

His words are soft, hesitant, like he’s worried he’s gonna spook her. The adrenaline of finally telling someone how she feels still hasn’t warn off. Her hands are shaking a little and she takes a seat at the breakfast bar.

“I don’t know how to.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s taken a year for me to even be able to say that and I’ve only been able to say it to you and we’ve spent most of our lives hating each other.”

They both laugh but it’s awkward and stunted. Neither of them seem to know how to handle how their relationship has changed so rapidly over the past 24 hours. Clarke feels like she might have whiplash.

“Do you feel better now?”

It isn’t a question she was expecting. Hell, she doesn’t know what she was expecting. She had never thought about what would happen if she told someone what was wrong with her. That had always been part of the reason she had been scared to tell people, the unpredictability of it all. Perhaps, what stands most to her is that he doesn’t seem shocked. Like, this is something he’s heard before, or maybe felt. She always imagined when she told someone her secret there would be more fanfare.

“Maybe. It’s just weird to have my words living outside my head.”

She’s hit by the realization that Bellamy is probably no stranger to what she’s talking about. Moreover, she’s struck by how little she knows about him. They’ve known each other for their whole lives but she just barely knows what his favorite color is, what kind of restaurants he goes to, where he likes to spend his free time. If anything, everything she knows about him could be distilled into one idea, that Bellamy Blake has always been a mystery to her and that mystery has always pissed her off because it’s one of the few she hasn’t been able to solve. Because she has moments, sometimes, where she thinks she gets it but then he’ll do something else that will completely shock her.

But now, she’s starting to wonder if the answers have been in front of her the whole time. She’s just been too scared to look at him too closely and see the truth: that there are more similarities between them than differences and that those similarities can make it excruciating to be around each other, just because neither of them like when shit comes easy.

“Well, I probably have never felt exactly how you feel but I’ve felt something like it. From my experience, it helped to talk about it sometimes, even if it felt uncomfortable and weird. So, if you need someone to talk to about it, who gets where you’re coming from…I can be that. If you want,” he says, looking at her intently. There’s so much goodness held in his eyes, so much kindness. She sees him in that moment as the Bellamy she always heard about but never got the opportunity to know, the one who would hold Octavia after she had nightmares, who hugged Abby after the Griffins received the news that Jake’s cancer was terminal. It shocks her a little, makes her feel like she’s staring into the sun and she has to look away.

“Er, thanks, Bellamy. I might take you up on that.”

Silence stretches between them, heavy and dull. Her body sags a little in her seat and her eyes have trouble focusing on anything other than the granite countertop in front of her. She feels so naked beneath his gaze now, even more than last night. Almost as though he’s now seen all of her, the parts that she’s even kept hidden from herself. She wonders if he thinks she’s pathetic. She wonders if this has shot the opportunity of them ever fucking again in the face. She wonders why she cares.

“Also, I’m sorry. You’re right, I got in my head and let myself fall into my self-loathing bullshit. I shouldn’t have brought you into it. Or, what happened last night. And, if you never want it to happen again or never want to talk about, that really is fine with me. I mean, I’ll be bummed because you’re a really good lay but I’ll be okay.”

She blushes at his words. “You’re not half bad yourself,” she says. He grins, ever so slightly, pulls his eyes away from her. “I think we both know I’m a little bit more than ‘not half bad,” he retorts and, suddenly, he’s the cocky Bellamy that she’s known for most of her life. However, this time, she’s able to see the charm in it. See how he’s trying to distract her from what was making her cry before.

“I don’t want that,” she says, finally, after the air around them becomes a little less heavy. His expression catches her off guard, the way his eyes go wide and he sucks in a breath, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I meant what I said before. After we did it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“So, where does that leave us?”

“About to do something really stupid that we both know we shouldn’t be doing but are going to do anyway?”

They laugh together. The surrealism of the situation begins to sink in and takes her mind off of everything that’s happened today, off Raven’s disappointment, her own inadequacy, the fact that just an hour ago, she believed that Bellamy truly didn’t give a shit about her, and that, slowly, it’s becoming more and more apparent to her that that isn’t the truth and she’s never gonna to know what to do with that information.

“What you said before we…” he trails off, like he still can’t understand how it all happened. “It made sense. There’s no danger of this continuing beyond this summer because there’s no way it can. Not with Marcus and Abby’s wedding. And Echo….”

The mention of Echo is like a spear through Clarke’s already tender heart and she can’t quite place why. She is at least able to hide the pain from her face.

“Yeah, I’m sure you kids will figure it out,” she manages, a bit too quickly, and his smile of appreciation sets her teeth on edge. It’s the reality check that she needed. This is just sex to him, some fun before he and his serious long-term girlfriend get back together and probably get married. Maybe friendship, if she’s able to muster up enough vulnerability to actually let him feel like he knows her.

“Besides, as stupid as it is for us to do this, it would also be stupid for us to squander this opportunity, before we’re officially family. Especially, since we know now good it can be.”

He looks at her with something like sin in his eyes, drawing her in. She’s struck by the memory of how good his body felt against hers and she knows he’s right. This is the last chance at something this good, this forbidden, before they’re officially in the same family and shit gets weird.

She realizes that this whole conversation was a ruse, that they both already knew what was going to happen ever since they kissed for the first time. This has all been a convenient excuse, a justification, to make them both feel like they’ve covered every base and for some reason, that’ll protect them from this going terribly wrong. She knows that this means that she should say no. That, she should be the responsible one. That’s how she usually acts, anyway, always being the contrarian who brings up the worst case scenario. However, when she tries to pull the denial from her throat, she can’t. Not when she wants him so bad.

Her eyes fall to his lips and he definitely notices, the corner of his mouth twitching up a little. “So, we’re in agreement, then?” He asks and his voice has the same husky quality it did before, when he asked her what she wanted him to do to her.

“Let the poor decision-making begin.”

*

They celebrate by fucking in the kitchen, fast and quick with her sitting on the counter where they eat breakfast every day. It’s even better than the last time, because they now know exactly what the other likes. When he pulls out after he comes, she finds herself grabbing his face in her hands and kissing him long and hard, until they’re both panting and breathless.

While they both slip their clothes back on, Bellamy and Clarke chat about what they want to eat for dinner. After the day they both have had, they agree the only option is delivery pizza. They eat together, joke around a little bit, and then both retire to their rooms, to sleep in their own beds, like the night before.

And, for one blissful moment, Clarke thinks that this just might work out. That, they can just fuck for a couple months and that everything will go back to normal. She’ll go back to Wellesley, and whatever the fuck is waiting for her there, and he’ll go back to Cambridge and Harvard and Echo.

And, nothing will be different at all. Or, at least, that’s what she keeps repeating to herself, over and over again, whenever she starts to fixate a little too much on way his eyes light up when he smiles, or how complete she feels with him inside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, thank you so much for reading and commenting on the last chapter - your comments especially were super sweet. This chapter is prob one of my faves - just b/c I love writing emotional scenes so I hope you all enjoy it as well. Thanks again for reading and let me know what you think about this chapter!


	5. Part V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!! Super sorry this chapter took so long - I did NaNoWriMo last month so it took up all my writing energy but I actually wrote 50k of original fiction, which I didn't think I was capable of when November started!!! So, I'm super pumped about that. I'm also super pumped to share this chapter with you! Thank you for your continued support and patience, I love and appreciate all of your comments and kudos. You guys make writing and publishing this story such a dream. :-)

One morning, she finds herself joining him in the library. Her heartbeat stutters a little in anticipation as she opens the door. Up until this point, Clarke has always kept her distance from this space, having considered it his and his alone. 

The door opens to reveal Bellamy, hard at work at the large wooden table in the middle of the room. It had been her father’s originally, before he replaced it with a newer, more modern model upon Abby’s insistence when they moved into the house where Clarke had grown up in Connecticut. She remembers how her mother had wanted him to just throw it out, since it had been in his possession since college when he had picked it up at an antique shop by his college campus. Her father had refused, in the soft, kind way he had of standing his ground, and had insisted on holding onto it. It had sat in their basement for years, until they all closed on the vacation house and they moved it to its home in the library. 

She remembers that this desk was where her father did work during the summer and how he would always be sitting at it when her mother sent her to grab him for dinner. Even during the summer, when school wasn’t in session, he still was working on his lesson plans, his projects, his attempts to reach high school students who hated math. When she would open the door, he would always look up at her and smile, no matter how immersed in his work he may have been in the moment. 

“What’re you doing here?”

Bellamy’s voice brings her back to the present. He’s wearing his glasses and they’re perched precariously on the bridge of his nose. There’s a seemingly ancient book sitting next to him, his laptop closed, and he’s taking notes in a Moleskin notebook. She thought he would at least feign annoyance at her interrupting his disrupting his dissertation sanctum but, if anything, he seems at least a little happy to see her. 

“Wanted a change of scenery. Is it okay if I read in here? I promise I won’t distract you.”

He nods and pats the seat next to him. It’s the one she would always sit at when her father was working. She thought seeing Bellamy at Jake’s desk would make her feel his loss more acutely, seeing the places he used to be filled by someone else. Instead, it sparks the most nostalgic sort of joy. She thinks that her father would probably have been happy to see Bellamy at his desk. He did always have a soft spot for him. 

She sits down and opens her book and tries to focus on the words on the pages. It’s the third book in the YA dystopian series that she started rereading when she showed up here. It’s fun and mindless and usually is enough to distract her from whatever bullshit is on her mind. 

However, it’s no match from seeing Bellamy out of the corner of her eye, deep in thought. He keeps flipping through the book next to him, then making notes in his notebook. Every once in a while, he makes a sound, typical a hushed expletive whenever he comes across something particularly surprising or interesting. His cursing is always followed by him scribbling in his notebook and then moving to look something up on this laptop. 

It’s an cycle that repeats numerous times over the hour they spend together in the library. Clarke makes barely any progress in her book, which is okay because she’s read it at least three times before. What isn’t okay is how his every movement stirs something in her, dark and hot. She had forgotten how much she likes the way he looks in glasses.

It’s been three days since they fucked in the kitchen, four since they fucked for the first time. After the second time, they had not so much as planned for it to happen again as they agreed to accept the inevitability of it. They hadn’t discussed how often it could happen or upon what terms. Clarke had preferred that at the time; hammering out specifics or guidelines would make it all feel too real. But later, once she was in bed and was tormented by the memory of how sweet his voice sounded wrapped around her name, she was immediately desperate for clarity, for understanding. She needs to know the next time it will happen, how long it will go on for, if she is right to believe that everything is going to end up okay, not messy or terrible or heartbreaking.

The need ebbs and flows. Sometimes, when they’re just eating breakfast together, chatting occasionally but mostly sitting in a companionable silence, she thinks she can bear it, that even just this is enough. Other times, like when she catches him coming out of the pool (he’s starting to swim laps, early in the morning, because he said the cold water and the early exercise make him produce his best work, to which she rolled her eyes at ), she’s overcome by the most terrible longing that she has to bite the inside of her cheek to distract herself from her lust with pain. 

Right now, need is all she feels. She keeps noticing the smallest details about him, the way the veins of the arm stick out a little whenever he writes in his notebook, how he chews on his bottom lip when he’s really focused on what he’s reading, how he’s always pushing his hair out of his eyes because it’s just a little too long and he’s due for a haircut. 

She’s been staring at him for a little too long and Bellamy notices. His eyes find hers and he grins. “Like something you see?” he asks and his voice has that gravel to it that she just can’t get enough of. 

Blushing, Clarke tears her gaze away from him, tries to focus on her book. “That’s really the line you’re going with?” she says, trying to keep her voice even. She flips a page, feeling the flush spread up her neck, making her ears hot and it almost impossible to think about anything other than Bellamy and the fact that she knows exactly how good it feels to fuck him. 

He chuckles and pushes his glasses back up his nose. She’s biting her cheek again, hard enough to draw blood, and it’s tangy and metallic in her mouth. Swallowing, she flips the page. 

“Don’t deflect. You’re the one who’s openly leering at me.”

“Leering at you?’ You’re one to talk. I’ve caught you trying to look down my dress at least three times since I sat down. Besides, you saying I’m leering at you makes it sound like you don’t like it.” 

“You got me there. I definitely like it.”

He pulls her book out of her hands and drops it on the floor. Suddenly, they’re kissing with everything they got, his body crowding hers into the chair. His mouth tastes like coffee. She remembers he’s been having trouble sleeping, that he told her recently that he thinks caffeine’s the only thing keeping him upright. 

They break away from each other, panting and breathless. “I don’t really want to fuck on a table again,” she finds herself saying and he gives her such a tender smile before pressing a kiss to her neck, right at her pulse point. 

“Who said anything about fucking? I can’t get that distracted. No, Clarke, I’m going to eat you out.”

She can’t hide her sharp intake of breath from him, her surprise. “Bellamy, you don’t-“

He cuts her off. “I want to. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since I saw you in your bathing suit for the first time.” 

Well, fuck. Clarke’s not going to argue with that. He helps her out of her chair and onto the desk. For a moment, she considers that this might be a fucked up thing to do on one of her dead dad’s favorite pieces of furniture. She quickly pushes the thought out of her mind, which is pretty easy to do, given the fact that she has also been fantasizing about Bellamy eating her out for what feels like, and could actually be, years. 

“Lay down,” he instructs and she obeys immediately. In bed, she's never been a good listener, always talking back and being a brat, to the point that Lexa stopped finding it cute and started finding it annoying, but something about Bellamy inspires obedience.

She notices know how he turns into a different person when he’s trying to get her hot. His movements smooth out, his body more certain. His voice gets that edge to it that she loves and his eyes go dark, pupil eating up iris. There’s something animalistic about his gaze, like he can’t decide whether he wants to destroy her or make her come. Their eyes met and it makes her realize how fucking wet she is already, even though he’s just barely touched her. 

He leans over the table, presses another kiss to her lips, this one bruising. Their teeth knock together and it’s a little messy but that just makes her even wetter, even more desperate for his touch. 

“Gonna make you come all over this table,” he whispers against her lips. Part of her, the part that still smarts at the memory of once, when she was 11 and he was 15, he emptied out all of her blue gatorades and filled them with blue mouthwash, wants to roll her eyes and tell him to just get on with it already. However, that part is definitively silenced by the rest of her, whose eyes go wide and whose mouth goes dry at the very thought. 

“We’ll see about that,” she manages, attempting to feign nonchalance, but her voice’s too wrecked to make it convincing. 

Her underwear’s sticking to her a little and she’s thankful she’s decided to wear a dress today, a simple cotton number that she’s taken to wearing around the house because it always rides up a little too high whenever she raises her arms. He seems thankful too, grins when he leans back and places his big hands on her hips to bring her closer to him, to his mouth. 

“So wet already,” he rasps, teasing his finger over the wet spot on her underwear. Her hips jump a little in response and he smirks, takes his hand away from her. Clearly, he isn’t about to make this easy on her. 

She knows that he wants her to beg for it.

He pushes up her dress, revealing her thighs. Her skin has a hint of red to it from a sunburn she got a couple days ago when she fell asleep reading by the pool. Bellamy looks at the soft redness in wonder and brushes his fingers over a pink patch near the crease of her thigh. It’s healed too much to hurt but the skin’s sensitive, tender. Before she can ask him what he’s doing, he leans in and kisses her there, making muscle beneath twitch in response and wetness drip into her already drenched underwear. 

“Jumpy,” he remarks, pressing a thumb to the muscle and grinding it in a little. Before she can tell him to stop teasing and fucking get her off already, he presses a kiss, wet and pressured, against where she wants him most, through her underwear. He lingers for a moment, letting his lips rest against her. Her hips cant up of their own volition and he catches them in his hands, holding her down. “Not yet,” he says and there’s something indulgent in his tone, like she’s a kid who’s asking for dessert before dinner. 

“For fuck’s sake, Bellamy,” she whines, trying to move her hips again. He pushes her down again (god, when did he get so fucking strong?) and this time it’s final. He can’t hide the depravity from his grin when he leans down, licks a vertical line over her underwear and just barely teasing her clit. It’s simultaneously too much and not enough and she keens at the sensation. 

“What do you want, Princess?”

“Not to play this game again.” She tries to sound annoyed but her words come out breathless and desperate. 

“C’mon, I know you like it too.”

Well, he’s got her there. She comes up on her elbows so she can look him in the eye when she says it because she knows that’s at least half of the fun. “Please, Bellamy. Please make me come” she says, her voice only trembling a little, and his eyes go wide and his mouth goes slack and she knows she’s done a good job, unraveled exactly the right string of words.

“Good girl,” he presses into the inside of her thigh. It takes him a tortuous amount of time to take her underwear off, almost like he’s trying to savor it. Finally, he slips them down her thighs and lets them fall on the floor. 

Clarke sucks in a breath. Her body quivers with the promise of how good she already knows he’s going to make her feel. 

He starts slow, first spreading her and brushing his tongue over her clit. She gasps, unable to hold it back. He traces shapes over her labia, trying to figure out what she likes best. 

Her hips jump a little reflexively and he pushes them back down, keeping her still. She opens her mouth to complain but, before she can, he wraps his mouth around her clit and sucks so tender that all her half-formed words become high-pitched moans. 

Just when she’s gotten used to the trembling pleasure of it, he switches it up, plunges his tongue into her pussy and fucks into her in short sweet jabs that make her keen so loud the sound reverberates off the walls of the library. “Fuck, Clarke, you taste amazing,” he moans against her, the vibrations making her body sing. He punctuates his words by flicking his tongue over her, fast and mean, until the only thing that she can get out of her mouth are broken syllables that keep beginning as his name. 

Her pussy clenches on nothing. He pulls his mouth away from her for a second and she whines at the absence. “Patience, Princess,” he scolds but without any real heat to it. He brushes his finger ever-so-slightly over where she’s aching for friction. She clenches again. Scrabbles at the table to grip onto anything but comes up empty, her nails screeching against the veneer. 

Finally, when it all feels like too much to bear, he slips a finger then another into her, easily. Then, his mouth is on her again, alternating between sucking and licking at her clit. Her hips jerk up and his arm is there, steadying her, keeping her pressed against his mouth no matter how much her body moves of its own accord. His fingers thrust in and out of her, pulling searing pleasure from deep inside her. 

She comes apart without warning, her cries of pleasure wanton and broken. His name gets mixed in with them but she doesn’t care, too caught up in how hard he’s making her come to care. Bellamy finger fucks her through it, his lips a constant pressure on her clit. He doesn’t stop until she pushes him away, squirming and oversensitive. 

“God, that was so fucking hot.”

He stands up properly and wipes his mouth on the park of the sleeve of his button-down shirt. She watches him from beneath half-lidded lids, sated and sleepy. He bends over and kisses her. She tastes herself on his lips and it makes her moan, her body still humming and twitchy. After a few breathless moments, he pulls away from her lips, his mouth upturned in a soft smile. 

“You’re really good at that,” she finds herself saying. She blushes immediately after and sits up, so she isn’t looking him directly in the eye. Bellamy, surprisingly, just looks a little shocked at her words before schooling his expression into his typical detached arrogance. 

“Thanks.”

They both look away from each other as soon as their eyes meet. To keep herself from sneaking a glance at him again, she reaches for her underwear and pulls them up her thighs. They’re damp against her skin. 

After a few awkward moments, she hops off the table. “Well, I’ll get going then. So you can focus on your work.”

His forehead wrinkles like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about and then he glances at what’s behind her on the table. His eyes light up with recognition. Clarke wonders if he had forgotten about he was supposed to be working on his dissertation while he was making her come all over her father’s table. The blush that climbs up his neck once he moves back to his seat suggests that that may be the case. He swallows once and then sits back at his seat. 

“Yeah, thanks. See you at dinner?”

“Sounds good.”

Clarke grabs her book and goes to leave. Bellamy’s cheeks stay pink-tinged until she’s gone. 

*

After that, she reads in the library more often than not. He smiles whenever she walks in and will make conversation with her when he needs a break. Sometimes, it’s normal small-talk bullshit, light and cheerful. However, every once in a while, he talks to her about his dissertation, his eyes alit with passion and his mouth moving so fast that she just barely catches every other word. 

It’s sweet, how excited he gets when he’s talking about his project. It’s all really high-brow shit, with a bunch of names that to anyone else would be unpronounceable but seem to fall off of Bellamy’s tongue so easily. When she asks him how he knows how to say all of them, he looks down, kind of shy, and says he started teaching himself Ancient Greek using some of Marcus’s old books when he was sixteen. 

After a week or so of her reading, him working, with occasional breaks for fucking in the living room or Marcus’s study (but never in their bedrooms, which seems like an unbroken rule that neither of them dare to break), she asks him for some paper for one of his notebooks. “Why?” he asks, his tone not unkind but curious. 

She doesn’t know why she feels nervous about answering him, like she’s about to reveal too much. Still, her heart quickens before she speaks. 

“Just wanted to doodle a little.”

Bellamy smiles. He’s been doing that a lot more lately. The calls with Octavia and Echo are less frequent. She hasn’t heard him go down to Kane’s study in search of liquor in a while. She wonders what’s changed but when that thought leads to its inevitable conclusion, she blushes and focuses her eyes on the piece of paper and pen he’s passed over to her. 

“No problem. Let me know if you need more.”

He then goes back to typing on his laptop. The previous night, he had stayed in the library all night, claiming he had hit a big breakthrough on a particularly stubborn chapter. He collapsed around 6am and slept on the couch until noon. She woke him with the smell of burning pancakes (she had attempted to cook breakfast for the two of them, since he looked so beat, sleeping slumped over on the couch). 

She had been worried that he would have been furious, since the acrid smell of burning breakfast food didn’t leave the house for a couple hours. Instead, he looked so bowled over by the idea that someone had attempted to make breakfast for him in the first place. They ended up going out instead, eating in a comfortable silence at the closest diner. He insisted on paying, even though she kept throwing her card down whenever he wasn’t looking. 

Idly, she sketches the image of her hand in front of her, like she usually used to do when she was a kid and needed to get into the zone. Even though she hasn’t been drawing much since she started college, it all comes back to her almost immediately, all the skills she taught herself using books from the library and YouTube. While it doesn’t come as easily as it did when she was 16 and had a pipe dream of attending art school, it’s still passable. 

Clarke flips the paper over and decides to attempt something more challenging. Bellamy’s hand catches her eye, balled into a fist and resting on the table. He’s wearing another button-down shirt today but he has an old Neutral Milk Hotel t-shirt underneath it, probably from when he was still in high school and only listened to alt-rock from the 90’s. When she first saw him, she had opened her mouth to make fun of him (“aren’t you a little too old to let everyone know how pretentious you are with a t-shirt,” she had imagined saying) but something about the well-worn cotton hanging off of his muscles made her mouth go dry so she didn’t end up saying anything.  
He’s rolled up the sleeves of his green shirt, the fabric stretched tight at the most muscular part of his forearm. Every once in a while, he knocks his fist against the wood of the table, in a small way, not loud enough to really mean anything but enough to show that he’s thinking hard about something. Without thinking, she begins to trace the long lines of his forearm, leading to his wrists, and then his fingers, with their bitten off nails and rough cuticles (he pauses every couple of minutes to gnaw at his nail beds whenever he’s particularly focused on something). 

Time passes quickly as she works and suddenly, an hour’s gone and she has a complete picture of Bellamy’s hand. She stares at it for a few moments, eyes wide in wonder, amazed at how quickly everything has come back to her. 

Bellamy looks up right when she’s finished. His eyes move from her face, beaming at her own work in pride, to what she’s looking at and then puts it all together. 

“Holy shit, Clarke, did you just draw that?”

His voice breaks through her awe-tinged reverie. It takes her a moment to remember that he’s in the room as while, her focus on her drawing having been so totaling. She blushes, hard, pulls it away so he can’t see it that well.

“Er, yeah. I just wanted to do something with my hands.”

He reaches out and pulls the drawing out from under her hands and inspects it more closely. Her heart hammers in her chest, embarrassment closing her throat. She can’t get rid of her expectation that he’ll write it off as something silly, like her mother always did whenever she caught Clarke drawing. “Oh, that’s nice, honey,” Abby would always say and it was the “nice” that always made Clarke want to collapse in on herself, the patronizing, blasé nature of it. Like, what Clarke was drawing wasn’t important enough to deserve a more critical look, one that it could never be anything more than just “nice.”

“Wow, this is amazing. Is this my hand? You even got the scar on my thumb,” he says, holding up her drawing to the light so he can study it better. A warm flush creeps up Clarke’s neck. His compliments are almost too much but they stir such warmth in her heart, touches something that she usually keeps hidden. 

“Really?” she finds herself saying, the question so soft and quiet he has to crane his neck to hear her. 

He hands the drawing back to her. His responding grin makes her insides tremble. “Yeah, really. Have you been taking art classes at Wellesley?”

She had wanted to - looked into the possibility of a Studio Art minor but Abby had been pretty insistent that Clarke should just focus on her Biological Sciences major. “You don’t need any distractions,” she had stated, plainly, before handing the course catalog back to Clarke. It had crushed her but she didn’t let on, only forced a smile and then nodded in agreement. 

Shortly after that, she stopped drawing. Decided that Abby was right, that she needed to put her head down and focus on what would get her into med school. Med school, preferably at Abby’s alma mater, Yale, has been what Clarke’s life has been hurtling toward ever since she could remember. 

She smiles, her mouth tight and small and timid, trying to stuff down the uneasy feelings that thinking about med school and art and her mother always stir in her. “Nope. I’m mostly self-taught,” she replies, before taking the drawing back from him and looking at it again. It looks different now, lit up by Bellamy’s praise. 

“Are you serious? That’s really impressive.”

She blushes an even deeper red. “It’s just a doodle, Bellamy.”

Incredulousness flashes across his face. “No, it’s not. This-“ he pauses to pick up his notebook sitting on the table beside them. There’s a series of squiggles done down the margin of the page. 

“This is a doodle. Yours is the real deal. Do you draw a lot?”

She frowns and the same uneasiness from before settles permanently in her stomach. “Not anymore. I used to a lot when I was younger but since I started school…” She trails off, not knowing how to end the sentence. Idly, she starts shading her drawing a bit more, having noticed a slight imperfection while Bellamy was looking at it.

“I take it your mom wanted you to focus on the pre-med stuff.”

Clarke nodded. Her brow furrows. She tries to distract herself from the pressure in her chest by focusing on a hangnail on his left thumb. “I mean, she’s right. It’s really hard to make a living doing art. And, if I become a doctor, I can really help people,” she says, her tone even. She almost repeats verbatim when her mother told her when she was 16 and brought home brochures for art schools that her high school studio art teacher had given her. After their conversation, Abby threw the brochures in the trash and left a handful about Ivy League colleges’ pre-med programs at Clarke’s spot at the dining table the next morning. 

“Yeah, making a living as an artist is hard but you’re smart and resourceful. If anyone can figure it out, it’s you. And art does help people. A lot.”

Her eyes widen at his kind words. She’s seen this Bellamy only a couple of times before, typically when Octavia had given up on something because she thought it was too hard. They were never conversations that she was truly privy too; it was the kind of stuff she picked up when she eavesdropped on them when she was walking past Bellamy’s bedroom at night or sitting in the front seat of Kane’s car while Bellamy and Octavia shared the backseat while they were all being shuttled to some group activity. 

“You really think so?” she hears herself saying. The uncertainty of her tone is humiliating but there’s no way for her to keep it out of her voice. 

He looks at her like she’s crazy. “Do I really seem like the type of guy who would blow smoke up your ass?” he says, grinning soft and easy at her. She finds herself blushing for a different reason, overwhelmed by how he might have one of the most beautiful smiles she’s ever seen.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Still, his words don’t quite sink in and from the way his expression goes from encouraging to determined, he can definitely tell. 

“Did you know that Marcus didn’t want me to apply to PhD programs?”

“Really? But, I thought he wanted you to like…follow in his footsteps or something,” she says, her voice uneven with surprise. 

“Couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, him being a professor is what made him so against it. He knows exactly how shitty academia can be. He’s seen humanities departments have their funding cut, seen people passed up for tenure because of stupid office politics. He loves teaching and research but he fucking hates the rest of it. Besides, with the way the job market is now, it’s more likely that I’ll be an adjunct instructor for years, getting paid shit, while competing with hundreds of people for the same three tenure track positions. My whole life, he’s been begging me not to follow in his footsteps. Do you remember Christmas my senior year?”

Clarke does, vividly. She had been 18 and it was her last Christmas before college. Kane and her mother had just started seeing each other and it was their first Christmas together, just the Kane-Blakes and the Griffins (sans Jake, of course). It had been at the Griffins’ expansive home in Tolland, Connecticut and Bellamy was horrible to be around for the entirety of the visit. Clarke had chocked up Bellamy’s sour mood to the size of her house, which even she thought was so big it was ridiculous. Except, now, the whole night is cast in a different light: the dejected slope of Bellamy’s shoulders, the tight clench of Kane’s jaw, Octavia rolling her eyes whenever either her brother or father made a jab at each other. 

“God, you were so angry,” she says. Bellamy’s lips twitch up in something like a smile but not quite. 

“Yeah, that’s when being angry all the time was still my thing. But, then I realized that, at the end of the day, I couldn’t live my life trying to please someone else. No matter how much they meant to me. Because, at the end of the day, I’m the one who has to live my life - not them. And some things, no matter how scary they meant seem, are worth the risk.”

She swallows. Turns away, like looking at him directly hurts. His words ignite something inside her that she’s kept hidden for so long: that type of hope that’s so fragile it feels dangerous to hold onto it even for a second. 

“Is he still pissed at you?”

“I mean, he isn’t exactly pleased that I didn’t listen to him but he realized that, at the end of the day, he couldn’t stop me. Besides, when I tried to pursue different shit…” Bellamy trails off, his eyes going far off and fuzzy. After a few sticky moments, he seems to come back to himself, his mouth in a fine line and his brow furrowed. His eyes drop to his hands. “It wasn’t good for me. Made me feel like life wasn’t worth living. So, Marcus realized it was better for me to be happy and in a PhD program than making more money and miserable.”

“My mom isn't like Marcus, though. She’s never really seemed to give a shit if I’m miserable or not.”

When Clarke hears the words from her own mouth, her heart stutters a little, like she can’t quite believe it. It’s the truth she’s felt for years but has never been able to say out loud. The lines on Bellamy’s forehead deepen. “Clarke…” he starts to say but she gets up from her seat before he can finish his sentence. 

“I think I’m gonna go for a run on the beach. To clear my head,” she says before getting up and gathering all of her belongings. She leaves the drawing of his hand behind.


	6. Part VI

He doesn’t let the awkwardness linger between them after their difficult conversation in the library. When they run into each other, in the hall, her just in a sports bra and shorts on the way to the shower and him coming back into the house after smoking a cigarette, he smiles in her in that disarming way of his that always confuses the shit out of her. 

“You okay?” he asks, his voice gentle. He leans up against the wall behind him. There’s concern in his eyes and it’s almost too much to look at him directly and be hit with the full force of his compassion, his kindness. She fixes her eyes to her feet, suddenly feeling embarrassed at what she had revealed to him earlier, in the library.

“Yeah. Running helped.”

“Usually does.”

She looks up, to see him still studying her. “I’m sorry for leaving like that,” she says, finally. The words run out of her mouth too fast and get all jumbled together. She toys with the strap of her cellphone armband that her mother had gotten her for Christmas last year, when Clarke was pretending that she ran regularly to get her mom off her case about exercising. Clarke had almost laughed at it when her mother had handed it to her but was able to bite her tongue. Running had seemed like an impossible mountain to climb, when she was just barely leaving her apartment. It languished in the bottom of her suitcase for the better part of the year; this was the first time she’d ever used it.

“S’fine.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

Silence falls between them. He’s simultaneously too close and far away, leaning against the wall. She wishes talking to him was as easy as fucking him was - without these awkward silences, the heaviness, the knowledge that there’s something deep and dark and thrumming building between them that she knows she won’t be able to forget as easily as she thought it would be when they kissed for the first time. 

“Does it ever get easier?”

“What’s ‘it?”

“All of it.” She doesn’t have it in her to say anything more. Bellamy’s eyes light up like he knows exactly what she’s talking about anyway.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I figure it out.”

They laugh together, a little sardonic, a little genuine. She notices how long his legs are, how he’s kind of having to curl them under his body so he doesn’t impose on her space. It’s cute.

“At least we’re in it together?” 

Her voice trembles a little with nerves because even though it’s a joke, it’s bigger than that to her. Somehow, in the course of the past week, Bellamy’s become the only person who knows a lot of shit about her and she’s still trying to figure out what exactly that means. 

“Of course we are, Princess.” 

After a few awkward moments, she finally pulls her eyes up from the ground and remembers why she’s in the hallway in the first place. 

“I’m gonna go. Take a shower, I mean.”

“Okay, see you later.”

He leans in and presses a kiss, light and warm, to her lips before walking down the hall. It’s the first he’s kissed her outside of something sexual. She can’t put into words the exact, perfect way it makes her heart sing. She blushes even more, ducks down her head down, and practically runs to her bedroom and then to her bathroom. 

She makes it a cold shower - just so she can stop thinking about it. 

* 

Fourth of July sneaks up on them, the last bits of June slipping through Clarke’s fingertips like they’re nothing. Days are spent in forgettable but pleasant manner - reading in the library, swimming in the pool, running on the beach, and more often than not, with Bellamy. What used to feel awkward has become comfortable - sharing meals, sitting in the library, reading by the pool, watching television together with their bodies curled around each other like spoons, fucking whenever they feel like it. 

Toward the end of June, Bellamy asks her if she’d like to come along with him on his grocery run. She agrees, only because she’s getting a little stir crazy and wants to check out the small art store in town.

He smiles when she says that, almost like he’s proud of her. They meet at his car 30 minutes later, and she can’t help but notice the way his eyes drag slow and hungry over her body. She meets his gaze, watches his lips turn up in a smile that promises more.

“I like you in that dress,” he says as they pull out of the driveway and start to drive out of the neighborhood. Clarke blushes, tries to pretend to be real interested in staring out the window.  
“Thanks,” she mutters, a little too flustered to say anything more. She had put on this dress thinking of him. For one terrible moment, she wonders how she’ll be able to give this up, the easy way he has of making her feel good. 

It takes them 20 minutes to drive into the city proper. They talk about what he’s planning to make them for dinner this week - the new recipes he’s excited to try. He’s been cooking through one of her mom’s old cookbooks that she left at the house one summer - mostly Italian fare with a little Mediterranean mixed in. Whenever he talks about a recipe, he really over-pronounces the Italian, which he attributes to the fact that he spent a semester in Rome in undergrad. It still always makes Clarke giggle, not in a mean way, but because it’s a kind of sweet and really corny how he wants to show off that he can pronounce “rigatoni” the right way. 

“You’re such a fucking nerd,” she finds herself saying, a little too fond, as they pull into the parking lot of the grocery store. 

“I’m a nerd who made you come at least 5 times last night so I’d suggest being a little nicer to me.”

She flushes, punches him in the shoulder. “Oh my god, you’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” she says and he laughs in response, which she figures she can take as a “no.” 

The memory of last night hits her in waves, how he ate her out for what felt like hours, not stopping until she begged for his cock, and then he bent her over the couch and fucked her until she screamed. Afterwards, they fell asleep together on the couch, both too fatigued to make it upstairs. It had been alarming, waking up with her body pressed against his, his breath in her mouth, his dick half-hard against her thigh, his arm thrown clumsily around her waist. But, when she stirred, panicked, and tried to extricate herself from his grasp before he woke, he just pulled her closer to his chest and asked her what she wanted for breakfast. She had been shocked by his nonchalance, how he really didn’t seem thrown by waking up with her in his arms. 

She’s been trying not to read too much into it but with every easy moment she spends in his company, it’s becoming more and more difficult. Every time she thinks she can convince herself that this is still the no strings-attached bullshit that they convinced themselves was possible at the beginning of the summer, he smiles and something warm and trembling and terrifying rises up in her chest and it takes everything in her power to crush it down.

They part ways and agree to meet at the ice cream place a couple blocks over once they’re both done. Clarke makes her way to the art supply store, weaving through the crowds of tourists that fill Cape Cod once it gets close to 4th of July. 

She can smell the salt of sea in the air, feel the soft heat of the pavement through her Converse sneakers. Summer used to be her favorite time of year, before her father and Wells died. After so much tragedy, special moments seem to lose their magic. But, today, walking around town, she feels just a hint of that promise again: fragile and fleeting but there, pulling her toward happiness or something like it. 

The art supply store is small, run by an older woman who was a successful artist based in New York in the 70’s. Clarke’s dad used to take her here at the beginning of every summer, joking that he was purchasing the supplies with which Clarke would create her next masterpiece. Don’t spend too much money, Jacob,” her mother would always say with a tight-lipped smile. He would always kiss her on the cheek and tell her not to worry about it and Abby would relax, if only for a moment. 

The door bell rings as she opens it, announcing her entrance. The owner, a dignified older woman with a shock of white hair, smiles at Clarke when she sees her then goes back to reading her book. 

She starts by looking at the sketchbooks. Bellamy’s been generous with his notebook paper but she feels bad always taking it from him. She picks up a cream-colored pad and runs her finger over the paper for a few moments. She can’t help but notice how happy even holding a sketchbook makes her, the promise it fills her chest with. The rest of her shopping goes by quickly. Along with the sketchbook, she picks out a set of colored pencils, a darker set for shading, and another Moleskin notebook for Bellamy, to help replace some of the paper he had given her. 

The purchase comes to around 50 dollars. Clarke digs through her wallet to find her one card that isn’t linked to her mother’s bank account. Once she’s done, she walks over to the ice cream and stands outside, waiting for Bellamy. She spends the fifteen minutes fucking around on her phone, texting with Raven a little, scrolling through Facebook. Thankfully, Bellamy shows up before she’s able to find her way to Lexa’s Instagram.

“Hey, I threw the groceries in the car. I brought some cooler bags so they should be good for a bit. How was the art store?”

She smiles at him, a little proud, a little embarrassed. “It was good,” she says before holding her bag open so he can look at what he purchased. He raises his eyebrows when he sees the notebook. 

“That’s the type of notebook I like.”

Clarke reaches into the bag and hands the Moleskin to him. “Yeah, I got it for you as a thank you. For letting me use so much of your paper.”

His mouth falls open, almost like he can’t believe it. “Clarke…You didn’t-“ he starts but she cuts him off before he can finish: “I know. I wanted to. Take it.” She pushes it into his hands before he says another word. 

They’ve been to this ice cream dozens of time before, usually as a group with their parents, Octavia, and Wells. Clarke always gets a scoop of cookie dough and and a scoop of peanut butter swirl but Bellamy’s always a wild card, taking at least 5 minutes to figure out which flavor sounds best and usually changing his decision at least once. 

Clarke stands off to the side while Bellamy debates the merits of caramel crunch and rocky road with the girl working behind the counter. From the cock of her hip and the easy tilt of her smile, Clarke can tell that ice cream girl is flirting with him. Bellamy seems way too caught up in the Sisyphean struggle that he’s turned picking an ice cream flavor into that he doesn’t even notice.

“Do you have any plans for the 4th of July,” Clarke hears the girl ask him. She doesn’t like the way her chest is constricting at the very thought of another person flirting with Bellamy. It is a feeling that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to her, too intimate, too possessive. 

She tries not to watch him but she can’t stop. He doesn’t seem to register that the girl has spoken to him at first. Then, when he looks up and sees her looking at him unexpectedly, he manages to grunt “huh?” at her before returning to his very important ice cream decision. 

The girl repeats the question. Bellamy’s brow furrows like he doesn’t quite understand it then, he looks over his shoulder at Clarke. “Are we doing anything for 4th of July?”

It’s the easy way that he says the word “we” that makes her heart jump into her throat. Like, thinking of them as a plural unit, people who do shit together, is so easy and natural to him. She realizes, with a jolt, that ice cream girl will think that this means that her and Bellamy are in a relationship.

Clarke almost chokes on her mouthful of cookie dough ice cream.

“Dunno. Maybe the boardwalk?” she manages, after a few moments of hacking coughs and sputtering breaths. 4th of July hadn’t been something that she had been thinking actively about. It’s a holiday too mired in traditions and memories with people who are no longer with her. 

When she was a kid, it had been her favorite and the best part had always been going to Sandwich, to walk the boardwalk and play carnival games with her dad, Theolonius, and Wells. Sometimes Kane and the Blakes would come. Her mother never did. Clarke hasn’t been since she was fourteen, the summer before Jake was diagnosed with brain cancer. It’s the only answer she could possibly think of to answer the ice cream girl’s question. 

“Guess we’re going to the boardwalk then. Can I get one scoop of rum raisin and one of coconut cream pie?”

*

She wakes on 4th of July overcome with anticipation. She spends the whole morning trying to talk herself down from it, repeating to herself over and over again that Bellamy’s just being nice, that he has nothing better to do, that going somewhere together, intentionally, isn’t that big of a deal, but whenever she thinks she has herself convinced, she’ll see him in the hall or in the kitchen and he’ll grin at her, sweet and secret, and her heart starts beating so loud it vibrates through her whole body.

Over breakfast, he tells her that he has to be in the library all day. He’s close to finishing a particularly difficult chapter of his dissertation and needs the whole day to focus on it. She thinks she hides her disappointment well by taking a big sip of coffee then shrugging. “See you around 6,” he says, before scrapping the leftover food off of his plate and then placing it in the sink. He doesn’t argue with her about doing the dishes anymore. 

She does not like how she’s starting to crave his presence, pines for it whenever they’re apart. Like the jealousy she felt toward the ice cream girl a couple days ago, it doesn’t feel quite right, the edges of the feeling’s intensity digging into her chest a little too much.

To take her mind off of it, she tries to do everything she’s been putting off. Predictably, her room is a complete fucking wreck and it takes at least an hour and a half to get all the clothes off the floor, do her laundry, and bring all of her dirty dishes down to the kitchen. While she’s cleaning, she talks to Raven on the phone. It’s mostly Clarke listening while Raven complains about the lab, about Sinclair’s unreasonable expectations of her, how she’s having to negotiate job offerings from at least three different aeronautic engineering corporations. 

Raven’s not being a bitch about it but Clarke’s having a hard time not feeling at least a little fucked up over it. She fucked up so bad this semester that she basically shot her chances at med school anywhere, let alone Yale, in the face and her best friend is already set to make six figures two months after graduation. That, plus the fact that Raven just revealed that Shaw has asked her to move in with him and she’s said yes, is making Clarke feel even more worthless than usual. 

Toward the end of their conversation, Clarke moves outside in the hopes that it would make her feel less nauseated with her abject lack of success or accomplishments. Once she’s settled in the pool chair she notices Bellamy’s pack of cigarettes and white lighter, sitting on the bubble glass table sitting between the two chairs. Without thinking, Clarke reaches over, places a cigarette between her lips and lights it. The first few drags don’t exactly make her feel better, she’s never really gotten cigarettes, but it takes the edge off a little. 

“Clarke, are you smoking?”

She chokes on the mouthful of smoke she was just inhaling. 

“Er, yeah, sorry?”

Raven huffs. “Since when do you smoke?”

“I don’t. Bellamy just left his pack outside.”

Silence hangs heavy on the phone line between them. Clarke knows she’s fucked up but doesn’t quite understand how yet.

“Are you guys hanging out?”

“I mean, kind of? We eat meals together most days and hang out in the library when we’re both working on stuff.”

She can practically hear Raven’s brain working over this information over her iPhone speaker. It makes her uneasy. Despite knowing that she shouldn’t, she continues smoking the cigarette. 

“But, you used to hate each other.”

“That was when we were kids, Raven.”

Raven lets out a snort and it hurts Clarke’s feelings a little.

“Not just when you were kids. When I slept with him, you told me that you hated him.”

Clarke frowns. Her reaction to Bellamy and Raven sleeping together is something she typically prefers to repress, given the fact that it was one of the worst fights she and Bellamy had ever gotten into and she still barely understands what it was about. She hadn’t been particularly great to Raven either. It was all shameful and annoying and very freshman year of college. 

“Yeah, well, he’s less annoying now.”

Another long pause, this one even more painful.

“Wait, are you guys sleeping together?”

Clarke practically chokes on smoke but covers it up by turning her face away from her phone when she coughs. After a few breathless moments, she puts out the cigarette, knowing she’ll need complete focus to get through the conversational whitewater rapids ahead of her. 

“No, of course not. Kane’s marrying my mom in less than year. That would be so gross,” she manages, barely keeping her tone even, but as always, her natural skill at lying carries her through. 

Raven seems to believe her. “Good. You don’t want to get mixed up in his shit with Echo.”

“What do you mean?” Clarke asks, just barely hiding her curiosity. It makes sense that Raven would know more about Bellamy’s break-up than she was letting on. Since they all lived in Cambridge, her and Shaw would often go on double-dates with Bellamy and Echo. Sometimes, Murphy and his girlfriend, Emori, joined. Clarke had always been a little pissed off about it. Lexa had never gotten along with any of her friends, so going had never been an option for her. Besides, back then, the idea of having to spend any extracurricular time with Bellamy sounded like absolute torture. 

“It sounds like a really messy breakup. They were fighting a lot, in the weeks before, would show up to game night all pissed and stuff. One weekend, they got kinda drunk and they started arguing about it when they thought Zeke and I weren’t paying attention. Sounds like it had something to do with him not wanting to move in together for some reason. She came over the night after she ended it but didn’t talk about it much. We just got drunk and played Super Smash Brothers.”

“He hasn’t really said much about it,” Clarke offers, dully, not knowing what else to say. 

“I bet. He seemed really fucked up over it after it happened. Kept calling her, begging her to take him back.”

Clarke swallows. “Really?”

“Yeah, but, she said he stopped around a month ago but she can’t quite figure out why.”

Clarke lets out a soft sound of surprise and tries to cover it with a cough. With her pulse thundering through her skull, she realizes that she knows exactly why. 

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah. Sorry for jumping to conclusions - it was pretty fucked up of me to think you’d actually sleep with him.”

Something like heavy and painful settles in Clarke’s stomach. She makes some bullshit excuse and ends the phone call, her thoughts still swimming and her pulse hammering in her ears. 

*

When they’re in the car together, driving to the boardwalk, he feels like a stranger. 

He doesn’t talk, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel whenever they come to a complete stop. His silence is not particularly surprising or foreign to her; perhaps her favorite thing about him is how he never forces conversation to fill up dead air. 

But, there’s a different shape to it now. She used to be able to make it out - always felt like she could read the map of Bellamy’s emotions like she was its cartographer. It wasn’t knowledge that he had giving her willingly but that she had picked it up nonetheless, after spending years watching him, learning him, trying to figure out why exactly he hated her so goddamn much. 

She never learned the answer to that question. Instead, she memorized the way his upper lip would twitch up when he was holding back a smile, how he would dig his nails into the pink flesh of his palms when he was pissed, the exact timbre of his voice when he was holding back something powerful, whether it be fury or something deeper, sadder, more painful. 

Bellamy keeps clenching and unclenching his jaw the whole drive, which means he’s thinking a little too hard about something. Clarke would be worried, but whenever their eyes meet in the rear-view mirror, the corners of his mouth twitch up ever-so-slightly before focusing his eyes back on the road. 

“Can you do me a favor?” Clarke asks, breaking the comfortable silence that’s settled between them. 

“Depends on the favor,” he replies but there’s an edge of teasing to his voice that makes her skin hot. She’s wearing a button down shirt, tucked into a pair of high-waisted cut-offs. She’s caught him staring at her tits at least 6 times since they got in the car together. Once, he stared so long he almost swerved off the road. 

“Can you make sure I don’t eat any cotton candy?”

Bellamy pulls his eyes away from the road for a second to look at her incredulously. “Not really getting how this is a favor, Princess,” he says, before taking the exit for Sandwich. It’ll take them another 10 minutes to get there. Clarke feels the same buzzy excitement from when she was a kid building in her chest. 

“Because, I can’t control myself around cotton candy. Literally. Once I start eating it, I can’t stop. Please. I need you to save me from myself.”

He gives her a look that’s half-indulgent, half-annoyed and he reminds her so much of her father in that moment, soft and kind and a little bit of a dick. She doesn’t know how to make sense of that feeling and the warmth it stirs in her. 

They park right off the main drag of Sandwich’s downtown. Bellamy cuts the ignition and Clarke reaches into the back to the backpack she filled with supplies to help them get through the night: towels to sit on, sunscreen, a flask full of nice whiskey from Kane’s liquor cabinet, some granola bars in case they get too drunk (Bellamy had insisted upon them). 

Clarke takes in the scene in front of her: screaming children, families wearing matching polos, sulky teenagers trying to sneak away from their parents, a handful of love-struck couples. Her stomach sinks as she tries to figure out where she and Bellamy fit in all this. She wonders if coming here with him was a bad idea - putting too much pressure on the fucked up intimacy that’s developed between them. She pauses, holding onto her backpack with one hand, her eyes fixed on the crowd in front of her. 

Bellamy notices her trepidation. Gives her one of his soft smiles that always make her head go a little fuzzy. “You okay?” he asks, placing his hand on the small of her back. The soft pressure sends tingles down her spine. 

“Er, yeah. I don’t remember it being this crowded when we were kids…” she trails off, suddenly hit with the overwhelming absence of her father, Wells, dead and buried in a cemetery in Tolland. “It’s just weird. Being here without them,” she adds after a few tense moments. 

Bellamy nods, soothes his hand up and down her back. “I get that. We can go, if you want.”

She shakes her head. “No, I want to stay. I want to try. I’m sick of running away from everything that makes me sad.” 

He grins at her, big and proud. “That’s my girl. Now, let’s get you some cotton candy.”

With that, he stops rubbing her back and grabs her hand. Leads her into the crowd. And that feels nice, the pressure of his hand against hers. But, it’s nothing compared to the way her heart sang when he called her his girl. 

*

He never stops touching her. If he’s not holding her hand, his hand’s pressed to her back. If his hand isn’t pressed to her back, his arm’s wrapped across her shoulder. Everywhere they go, all Clarke can think is that to anyone who happens to glance their way, they look like they’re in a relationship. She can’t hide from the secret thrill that gives her, thinking of herself as Bellamy’s girlfriend, in a world where their parents weren’t getting married this spring and he didn’t have Echo and she didn’t have Lexa and there wasn’t all this history between them - heavy shit that they will never be able to escape. 

As they weave their way through the crowd, she creates a story of their relationship - an easier one than what they’re stuck with. Maybe they met in Cambridge, bumped into each other on the street and struck up a conversation with each other. She imagines them walking together to a coffee shop, getting to know each other better. Then, he asks for her number and even though she usually doesn’t give her number to strangers, there’s just something about this Bellamy Blake that she can’t deny. Maybe they go on a couple dates, have kissed once or twice, and he asked her to join him at his family’s vacation house for the 4th and she said yes and now they’re here, at the boardwalk together, walking hand-and-hand without a care in the world and warm with the promise of what’s next for them. 

Maybe, in this made-up life that she’s created, they’re just starting to fall in love.

As soon as the thought crosses her mind, Clarke hates herself for even thinking it. Washes it down with a swig of whiskey from the flask. Bellamy raises an eyebrow but takes one too. As they walk through the crowd, they pass it back and forth, until Clarke’s fantasy has been drowned out by the buzz of the alcohol. 

They buy hot dogs and eat them sitting a bench to the side of the boardwalk. Children run by with painted faces, their parents close behind. Bellamy gets mustard on his face but doesn’t notice - keeps talking about how he thinks that if you’re over the age of 12, you shouldn’t be allowed to get ketchup on your hotdog. 

“It’s so fucking sugary, it basically ruins the hotdog,” he’s in the middle of saying when she reaches out and dabs the mustard away with her thumb. Bellamy stops speaking, stunned. Blinks at her a couple times. 

“Sorry to stop your impassioned rant. It was just a little hard to take you seriously with mustard on your face.”

He smiles a new smile. One she’s never seen before. It’s soft and open and small, almost like he’s scared to let her know how happy he is. Suddenly, he’s kissing her and his mouth tastes like salt and mustard and it takes everything in her power to pull away, blushing. 

“Bellamy, we’re in public,” she mutters, cheeks bright pink. He just grins at her in response and goes back to eating his hot dog. 

“Don’t really see how that’s a problem.”

She rolls her eyes but can’t find it in herself to really be that annoyed with him. 

They finish their hotdogs and go back to walking around. Bellamy insists on playing one of those stupid carnival games where you try to throw balls through tiny holes for some shitty prize that probably is only worth a dollar at the most while the game itself costs 5. He plays 3 times, until he wins a small teddy bear, which he immediately hands to Clarke.  
“You really didn’t have to,” she says but she can’t hide the way him trying so hard to win her something makes her smile. She puts the bear into her backpack.

“I know,” he replies, that same smile from before on his face. 

The sun’s starting to go down, which means the fireworks are going to start soon. He tips the teenager working the carnival game an extra five and then grabs her hand to lead her toward the beach. Everyone else has begun to migrate there. When she was a kid, this was always her favorite part. Her dad would always scope out the best spot a couple hours ahead of time and make a beeline for it the second it started to get dark. Unfortunately, given the fact that they’re both too tipsy to plan ahead, they end up sitting at the edge of the beach, far away from everyone else. 

Clarke sets up their towel and they both take a seat. In the distance, she hears children laughing, parents psyching them up for the big show. The sun has just dipped below the horizon and she feels the same buzzy anticipation she’d always feel as a kid. She and Bellamy pass the flask between them again as they wait for the fireworks to start. 

“Thank you,” she finds herself saying after the alcohol has loosened her tongue a bit. Bellamy raises an eyebrow.

“For what?”

“For today. For making me happy and distracting me from all the sad bullshit that I usually spend my time thinking about.” 

Bellamy’s face softens. “You don’t have to thank me for that, Clarke. Honestly, I should be thanking you…” he trails off, something dark coming over him. “I’ve been dreading this day all summer. Reminds me too much of Octavia. 4th of July’s her favorite holiday,” he adds, after a few quiet moments.

“Have you talked to her recently?” she asks. In the distance, a little girl asks her mom when the fireworks are going to start. 

He nods. Reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his pack of cigarettes. He lights one and stares hard at the place where ocean meets sky. 

“I did last week. She still won’t tell me where she is. Says she’s with friends and she’s safe but I just…” he pauses to take a drag. His brow is furrowed. She sees how he’s hurting. Unable to help herself, she reaches out and places her hand on his shoulder. His body eases into her touch and he places his hand on top of hers.

“I’ve spent my whole life taking care of her. Watching out for her. Protecting her. Not knowing where she is, not being able to see her…it’s fucking agony. Like part of me’s missing. Marcus says she just needs time but…god, sometimes I feel like I don’t know who I am without her. Does that make sense?”

His words make her heart hurt in the worst way. “Yeah, of course it does,” she says, soothing her thumb along his shoulder. She can’t even imagine what he’s feeling - has never let herself love someone like Bellamy loves Octavia - always been too scared to. Afraid of what it would do to her. 

Bellamy sighs, takes another drag. He passes it to her and she does as well before handing it back to him. Distantly, she hears a firework go off, the opening of the show. She doesn’t even look up, her eyes fixed on Bellamy. 

“Fuck, it’s sad how bad I needed to hear that…I don’t know. Echo just didn’t get it. She never did. And, I used to tell myself that it was okay, that I didn’t need someone to understand how I felt. That I could handle it on my own. But, god, it gets so heavy, carrying how I feel all by myself.”

Clarke hears so much of herself in him. The isolation, the pain, the fear of being vulnerable. She remembers trying to talk to Lexa about her father’s death, only to be greeted with empty platitudes and uncomfortable silence. When she pressed her about it, Lexa sighed. “I don’t know how to talk about stuff like that. I’m sorry,” she had said and that was that. Clarke never tried to discuss anything heavy with Lexa ever again. 

“You don’t have to carry it by yourself, Bellamy,” she says. She finds herself pressing her body against his. Lights flash overhead: pink, red, purple, green. Clarke catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. She watches Bellamy’s eyes flick up for a moment before they get cloudy and distant, like he’s trying to hold back tears.

“Neither do you.”

Something terrifying and too much swells in her chest. And, for the first time in what feels like years, she doesn’t feel alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your sweet words and encouragement!! I'm sorry this chapter took so long - I got a puppy literally right after I published the last chapter and it's hard to find time to write when there's a very cute but very young creature who needs your constant attention. She's getting more and more independent everyday so the next chapter won't take as long. Thank you for your patience and please let me know what you think about this chapter! :-)


	7. Part VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!! Sorry again for the wait - this chapter was a monster that really took on a life of its own. Hopefully, the length makes up for it. Thanks as always for your sweet comments. I can't wait to hear what you guys think about this chapter!!

Abby calls her the week after Fourth of July to tell her that she’s selling the house in Tolland. “It just doesn’t make sense to keep it. I’m going to move in with Marcus when we get back,” she says, simply. It’s the first time they’ve spoken since Abby landed in Italy a couple months ago. 

There was some preamble - where Abby asked Clarke how her research assistantship was going, to which Clarke managed to cobble together some bullshit about how she’s really gotten into Chemistry and how she gets along so well with her fellow research assistants. It wasn’t even one of her better lies. She stumbled over words, mixed up names for the fake people she’d created. Still, her mother didn’t catch on, just kept saying how proud she is of Clarke in that distant way of hers that always makes Clarke feel like Abby doesn’t know anything about her. 

Once her mother admits to her plans to sell the house in Tolland, Clarke realizes that’s the real reason her mother called. It’s almost laughable, how clueless she is. Clarke’s fairly certain that she could wear a giant sign that says: “help, I’m seriously depressed and probably need someone to check in on me from time to time,” and her mother still wouldn’t get it. It’s a truth she’s ignored for years but now, after opening up to Bellamy a bit more, it’s become more obvious. It doesn’t matter that she’s a great liar; her mother’s never going to catch on because she doesn’t care enough to pay attention. 

When she got the call, she was hanging out in the kitchen while Bellamy made breakfast. Not wanting her mother to sense Bellamy’s presence or pick up on the fact that she was at the vacation house, she had gone outside. 

She’s standing on the deck, overlooking the beach. Her mother’s talking about her plans for the house - how she’s going to purge most of their belongings and move whatever’s left into the storage unit they got for Jake’s things after he died and they couldn’t have his shit in the house anymore. Clarke nods, says “mhm” at the right times but she’s barely paying attention. She can feel a storm brewing in her body, one that she isn’t sure that she has the strength to weather. Her hands are shaking and she feels it: the urge to self-destruct, to do her best to evaporate into nothingness, anything to get away from this feeling. 

She just barely hears her mother address her directly: “Clarke, I would appreciate if you could get your things packed up this weekend and let the realtor into the house so he can start appraising the property.”

Clarke stops pacing. Bellamy looks out the window that looks onto the deck. Waves at her to get her attention. “You good?” he mouths, concern furrowing his brow. She nods and gives him a tight-lipped smile.

“Already? Aren’t you moving a little fast?”

“The realtor told me the market’s hot. If there’s anytime to sell, it’s now,” Abby replies, her voice controlled and clipped. Clarke hears Marcus come into the room and ask if Abby’s ready to go. 

“Honey, I’m sorry, Marcus and I have a reservation for dinner. Will you be able to help out with the realtor? He’s coming this Sunday so it would be great if you were packed up by then. I’ll be having movers take care of the rest.” 

Her mother’s tone leaves no room for argument. Clarke sighs. She knows this a battle she won’t be able to win. 

”Sure. Have a great dinner, Mom.”

“Thanks, Clarke. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

With that, her mother hangs up the phone. Clarke slips hers into her pocket. She lets herself stare into the ocean. It’s a foreboding grey today, reflecting the dark clouds in the sky.

She stands there for a little too long, lets her thought spiral to the darkest possible places. Like always, she’s able to pull herself back, right before they reach their inevitable conclusion, but she cuts it a little close this time. Her head’s buzzing and she has to try real hard to turn her head away from the sweet oblivion of the ocean and walk back into the house.

Breakfast is waiting for her, on the counter: a piece of French toast with a square of butter on the top and drizzled in syrup. Bellamy’s already finished and is reading the newspaper when she comes in. He peers over the paper when he hears the slap of her bare feet against the tile floor. 

“Everything okay?”

Clarke sits down at the counter and takes a bite of French toast. It’s so good and rich. She stuffs it into her mouth, in the hopes that butter and sugar and carbs will numb the painful lurching in her stomach that began as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. 

“Not really,” she manages, her lips sticky with syrup.

“Wanna talk about it?”

He folds up the newspaper and places it on the counter. He’s wearing his glasses again and they make him look so grown up sometimes that she almost doesn’t recognize him.

Clarke’s heart stutters in her chest. Her first instinct is to say no, make some excuse about needing to get some air, and then hiding from him for the rest of the day, until he hopefully forgot that she had ever let on that she’s anything other than fine. However, something inside her fights back. Forces her to stay in her chair and open her mouth.

“Sure…” she trails off, her palms suddenly panic warm. She pulls her eyes away from him. “I don’t know. The only reason my mom called me was to tell me that she’s selling the house in Tolland and she’s moving in with Kane. Oh, and I have to pack up my room this weekend.”

“God, your mom sure loves springing shit on you.”

Clarke nods. Takes another too big bite of French Toast that she works over for what feels like forever before it’s swallowable. 

“It’s one of her favorite things to do and she’s gotten very good at it. Though, she’ll never beat the classic ‘hey, Clarke, your dad has cancer and only has two months to live and we’ve known for over a year but I decided to keep it a secret from you.”

After she finishes speaking, she watches for his reaction. In some ways - this is a test, a secret she’s only revealed to a handful of people and none of them have ever reacted well. It almost destroyed her relationship with Wells, made Finn look at her like he had hit the hot girl with daddy issues jackpot, led to Lexa pulling away (even more than usual). Hell, she’s never told Raven - too afraid of how it might ruin their friendship even more than Clarke’s usual bullshit has. 

She wonders if he knows that she’s testing him. There’s the tell-tale ticking of his jaw that lets her know that he’s thinking a little too hard. He takes off his glasses and sets them on the table. “I didn’t know that’s how that went down,” he says, finally, after silence has hung on the air a little too long. There’s something soft in his voice that almost sounds like regret but that doesn’t make sense, not to Clarke anyway. 

“Yeah. That’s why we weren’t sitting together at the funeral.”

Bellamy nods, casts his gaze down to his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally. 

Clarke’s eyes widen. “Why? What do you have to be sorry about?”

He still doesn’t look up at her. His brow furrows. “For the things I thought about you back then. I don’t know, I always thought that you didn’t sit with her because you were spoiled and stuck-up and acting out.”

After a few tense moments, his eyes flick up to check her expression. “It’s okay,” she says, her voice so soft she barely hears it herself. Suddenly, she becomes very aware of how her heart’s a trembling, delicate thing, completely at Bellamy’s mercy. 

“It isn’t.”

“If it makes you feel better, I used to think loads of horrible things about you.”

The corner of his mouth twitches up. He sneaks another glance at her. “Really? Like what?”

“Mostly, that you were an asshole and a shithead and a delinquent and you only got away with it because you were kind of good-looking and a little charming and Marcus always let you off easy.”

“Only kind of good-looking?” There’s that hint of teasing in his eyes that she can’t get enough of.

Clarke rolls her eyes, tries to look a little mean but it’s hard with the flush climbing up her neck. “It was hard to think you were more than ‘kind of’ when you kept snapping my bra and calling me ‘Princess’ all the time, even though I told you I hated it.”

“Well, to be fair, you were the one who was always snitching on me and trying to get me caught.”

“It wasn’t fair! You never got grounded or anything,” she says. She blushes a little at the way she sounds just like she’s thirteen again. 

Bellamy laughs and the vibration of it hums through her ribcage. She remembers when she used to hate the sound of his laughter, his joy. More often than not, it was at her expense. But now, the sound fills her to the brim with something precious and warm. After a few moments, she finds herself laughing too.

“God, you were such a pain in my ass,” he replies, more than a little fond. “In more ways than one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Now, it’s Bellamy’s turn to redden. “God, I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this.”

Clarke sits up in her chair. “Tell me what?”

He messes with his hair a little, almost as though he wants to cover his face. “Up until you were like…sixteen, you were just a normal pain in my ass. Like, little sister shit. But, god, when you turned seventeen…” he trails off. Clarke fills in the blanks. 

The summer after her seventeenth birthday was terrible. That winter, they had buried a sunken shadow who bared only passing resemblance to Jake Griffin. For the entirety of that year, she still felt the press of her father’s skeletal hand against hers almost like it was imprinted into her skin. She refused to speak to her mother - would barely be in the same room as her. The only reason they had gone to the beach house that summer is because the therapist who Abby shuttled Clarke to once a week said that some sunshine and a change of scenery would be good for her. 

The Kanes and Jahas were there, like always. Wells and her were barely on speaking terms, having fallen out over some stupid argument that she barely remembers around the time of her father’s funeral. He knew to keep his distance when Clarke was pissed. They made up right at the end, only months before he died a senseless death at the hands of a drunk motorist who didn’t even stop after knocking Wells to the ground. 

Octavia spent the majority of the summer with her townie friends, going to the arcade and eating too many corndogs on the beach. Bellamy, on the other hand, was a sulking, towering presence that rarely left the house but spent most of his time in his room. The only signs that he had been there at all were scattered - coffee cups with black stains at the bottom, cigarette butts by the pool chairs, the cacophony of him arguing with Marcus echoing through the home. 

It wasn’t one of their best summers. 

The beach house had been ruined by the loss of her father. It had been their place more than anything else. Her mother typically spent the summer prepping to teach her next year of courses at University of Connecticut’s School of Medicine. Jake, on the other hand, was a high school math teacher and had the ability to unplug for the summer. He devoted himself solely to Clarke, his time completely at her disposal. In retrospect, Clarke can see this for what it was: a consolation prize for the fact that, during the school year, her parents never paid her much mind - too caught up in work, their rocky relationship, the all encompassing dread of adulthood. She saw them for an hour at dinner and then not at all. 

Even if it was a consolation prize, it was one she looked forward to all year. And, with Jake gone, there was nothing. Her mother would try, every once in a while, to connect with her but Abby’s attempts were half-hearted, spotty. She would knock on Clarke’s door every couple of nights and ask her if she wanted to talk and Clarke would always say no. Occasionally, she’d shout it at the top of her lungs and then Wells would come by to check on her and she would say no to him too, even louder, so everyone in the house would hear and know to leave her alone.

She and Bellamy did not spend much time together that summer. They mostly brushed past each other in the hallway, ran into each other in the kitchen at 3:30am every once in a while when they both made late night snacks and ate them sitting on opposite ends of the table. He would never say anything more than “hey Clarke” and then would ignore her with such intensity she could not help but find it a little aggressive, even for Bellamy. When they all sat down for dinner, he would always wait until she sat down before he chose a seat. Sometimes, Clarke would walk out to the pool in her bathing suit and see him reading on a pool chair but he’d get up as soon as he saw her coming. She had taken it a little personally but, in the end, wrote it off as Bellamy being a dick and didn’t give it too much thought. 

But, now, with four years between then and now and the heavy weight of Bellamy’s gaze, it clicks into place. “Oh my god. Did you have a thing for me when I was still in high school?”

Bellamy groans and covers his face with his hands. “I know, I’m disgusting.”

She cannot deny the surge of pride she feels at learning this - how it kind of makes the worst year of her life seem the tiniest bit better. “I mean, I was only one year away from being legal,” she offers.

“Still. Not exactly my best moment. That’s why I was so shitty to you that summer. I’m sorry about that too, by the way.”

His words stun her a little. The word sorry always sounds strange from his mouth because he has said it to her so infrequently - not even after he dumped a cup full of ice down the back of her dress while she was talking to her crush, some townie named Sterling who she met at the arcade, when she was fourteen and she screamed so loud that Sterling left the room and never spoke to her ever again. Or, when she was fifteen and he was nineteen and he hid a box of condoms in her underwear drawer on the day he knew that her mother was doing her laundry, leading to the one of the most uncomfortable conversations that Clarke has ever had. 

To be fair, the revenge that she enacted upon him was just as bad: bolting his bedroom window closed on the night she knew that he was going to sneak out to hang out with Roma and faking sick so well it convinced her mother and father to stay home from a trip that all the adults were planning to Martha’s Vineyard on the exact weekend that Bellamy was planning to have a party, forcing him to cancel it, without any opportunity for it to happen again for the rest of the summer.

With all the terrible things between them, neither of them has managed to summon up anything even resembling genuine atonement - no matter how many times their parents forced them to mumble a half-hearted “I’m sorry” when they were trying to find a way for Bellamy and Clarke to exist in the same house for the rest of the summer. But, now, it seems so easy to him and she can’t quite figure out why - doesn’t want to think about it too long because she’s scared of what she might find. 

“It really is okay, Bellamy. You don’t have to keep apologizing for shit that happened when we were kids,” she says. Something flashes across his face that she doesn’t quite understand. He leans back in his chair. 

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

His second sentence hangs in the air a little too long. Hits her straight in the chest. She opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out. It’s the truth that’s held in his sentiment that really knocks her off her feet - the way he can’t take his eyes off of her. 

“Can I ask you a favor?” she asks. 

“Sure, Princess.” 

“Could you come with me? To the old house in Tolland? I don’t really want to be there by myself,” Clarke manages. The words are rushed, almost like she’s afraid of what’s going to happen once she finishes speaking. 

The soft, easy way he says yes breaks her open. 

*

When the weekend comes, they take Clarke’s car. It’s the first time she’s driven with Bellamy. He asks if he can smoke while she drives, eyes downcast like he’s ashamed, and she tells him to just crack the window.

“You’ve been smoking more lately,” she remarks as she merges onto the highway. 

“If you’re going to give me a lecture, you can save it. I heard it a hundred times from Echo and it still wasn’t enough to make me quit for good.”

“No lecture here. I was just noticing.”

Bellamy grunts and flicks his finished cigarette out of the car. “I guess I’m a bit more stressed than usual,” he manages, after a long pause. 

“Any particular reason why?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

There’s a harsh end to his sentence, one that reminds her of the Bellamy from before this summer and the way they used to talk to each other. 

His words prick her where she’s most sensitive. Immediately, she stiffens, finds herself regretting her decision to ask him to come along with her that she almost turns the car around, just so he doesn’t have to spend anymore time with her. 

Clarke sneaks a look at him out of the corner of her eye. His jaw is set, his eyes fixed on the road. He has hollows under his eyes and a five o’clock shadow creeping its way across his face. She wonders when he last got a full night’s sleep. 

“You didn’t have to come with me,” she says, unable to keep the edge of defensiveness out of her voice. She pulls her eyes away from him and focuses them on the road. 

They’ve only been driving for thirty minutes and have another two hours to go. Clarke reaches out and turns up the volume of the radio so they don’t have to speak anymore. Some top 40 pop song blares through the the speakers. 

Bellamy reaches out and turns radio down. “That isn’t what I meant, Clarke. I wanted to come with you.”

Clarke’s heart stutters in her chest. She takes her eyes off the road to make sure he’s serious. Just like she hoped, there’s Bellamy’s kind eyes. She stares for a little too long, almost long enough for the car to swerve, but she snaps back to the task at hand just in time. 

“You sure? Because, I could take you back if you-“

“Yes, I’m sure,” he cuts in before she can finish speaking.

Neither of them speak for a while. Clarke tries to focus on driving but her mind keeps wandering back to Bellamy and what could possibly be bothering him. He’s always a little bit more reticent to share - seems to prefer talking about Clarke’s problems. He only brings up his own experiences, worries, fears when he seems to think it might be helpful to something she’s talking about. He’ll tell her about a problem he’s already figured out - like his relationship with Kane or his experiences in school. Every once in a while, he’ll let something slip - like their conversation about Octavia on 4th of July or whenever he mentions Echo, but that seems to only be when he’s a couple drinks in and gazing into her eyes a little funny. 

And, Clarke tries not to mind that. Most of the time. Because, she’s the last person who has any right to be upset about another person not talking about what’s bothering them. Still, she’s shared so much with him in these past couple months - so much more than she’s shared with someone in what feels like forever and she can’t help but feel as though their relationship has become a little lopsided. 

“You know, you can talk to me too.”

“I talk to you all the time.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “I mean, like your problems. What’s bothering you. Like, the type of shit you’re always making me talk about with you. I might not be as good at giving advice as you are but I think I’m a good listener.”

She sees him frown out of the corner of her eye. He flicks his cigarette out the window but doesn’t remove another from the pack of Marlboro 27’s that’s sitting on the dashboard. 

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘you can’t?” Clarke asks, her voice going a little shrill at the end of her sentence. 

Bellamy shrugs. “I just can’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with you specifically. I just…I don’t talk to people about that kind of stuff. Not when it’s happening, at least.”

“Are you serious? After all those lectures you gave me? That’s such bullshit, Bellamy.”

“Are you really telling me that you’ve never given someone advice that you aren’t able to follow yourself?”

He sounds so much older than usual. More tired. Clarke hears him light another cigarette - she assumes to keep his mouth busy so he doesn’t have to talk to her. 

She opens her mouth to respond. Feels the acid on the tip of her tongue. But, something inside her pulls it back. He doesn’t have the usual fire he’s brought to every other argument they’ve had. She can’t help but glance over again, just to make sure he’s okay.

Her heart softens when she sees the torment wrinkling his brow. 

“Sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

“Pushing you.”

“It’s okay,” he says with a sigh. “You’re right. It’s wrong of me to constantly be telling you to do things that I can’t even do.” 

Clarke frowns. She can’t help but be caught off guard by how heavy Bellamy’s self-hatred is sometimes. Growing up, her characterization of him had been shaped fundamentally around his arrogance and ego. Makes her feel like she never really knew him, not until this summer, at least. 

“It’s not that big of a deal, Bellamy,” she says. They sit in silence as the New England countryside rushes by. Clarke takes an exit, gets on the highway that leads directly to Tolland. She does it without thinking, gliding down the ramp and merging into the flow of traffic heading toward Connecticut. 

The first time she drove had been on this highway, coming home from the beach house at the end of the summer before her sophomore year of high school. It was just her and her dad in the car - Abby having left Cape Cod the previous weekend to prep for the upcoming school year. She didn’t have her learner’s permit yet but he said it was okay and she believed him. Cancer had begun its slow consumption of his brain but he hadn’t told her yet. Thinking back, she wonders if that’s why he let her. Maybe he had thought that might have be his only chance to teach her how to drive. 

“I don’t know how,” Bellamy explains, finally. His voice breaks a little on the last syllable. 

“What do you mean?”

“I just…I never learned how. To talk to people about things. My mom never asked me how I felt. She was too tired from work or too drunk to care. She loved me but she didn’t have time to get to know me. Figure out what I needed. Whenever I asked for anything…” he trails off, his eyes going far-off and unfocused for a second. “It made her angry. Because I think it made her realize that she couldn’t give me what I needed and that made her feel bad. So, I learned that it was better to keep things to yourself. And, even though I’m old enough to know better now, I can’t do it. Maybe there’s some shit that just fucks you up forever.”

“Bellamy,” she starts, but her voice drops off at the comma after his name. She doesn’t know what to say. Nothing in her life has prepared her to deal with this sort of honesty - simultaneously brutal and vulnerable. 

He cringes at the sound of her voice. Like her care for him hurts. Focuses his eyes out the window instead of looking at her. “I shouldn’t have told you that,” he says.

“Why?” she asks. Her voice is pitched high with hurt. 

“Because, now, you’re going to feel bad for me.”

“Is it really so wrong for me to feel bad for you? You’ve had a hard life.”

Bellamy snorts. “Yeah, I did. Then, some rich professor took pity on me and saved me from my hard life and ever since then, I’ve had it pretty goddamn easy.”

Something clicks into place for her. The part of Bellamy that had always been a mystery to her growing up: his insistence on buying all his clothes from Goodwill even though Kane could afford better, his unwillingness to let Kane buy him a car when he turned 16, the fact that he went to Boston University because they gave him a full ride, even though Kane insisted that he could pay for Harvard. 

And then, with frightening clarity, she understands why he hated her so much. 

She represented everything about his new life that made him feel terrible: the privilege, the easiness, the entitlement. It was not her but what she was: a little, rich blonde girl raised by two people who had been born into wealth themselves. She had grown up without knowing that money was something to be worried about. 

“Do you really think that?” she says, once she’s regained the ability to speak.

“Think what?”

“Think that Kane adopting you erases everything that happened to you before?”

“Clarke, I saw what happened to the kids I grew up with. How they had to go to public schools in bad neighborhoods, where the teachers weren’t paid enough, and there were no resources or ways out. Half of them didn’t even graduate high school. The ones who did stopped there. I used to try to keep in contact with them - Miller, Conner, Atom…But, who I am now….It’s not someone who they want to know.”

For a long time, neither of them say anything. Clarke keeps opening her mouth but always shuts it before anything comes out. Bellamy stares out the window. At some point, he falls asleep. The soft hum of his snoring fills the car. Clarke sneaks a glance at him. Slumber has softened his face. Almost makes him look like a different person, one who isn’t haunted. 

She lets him sleep until she takes the exit for Tolland. It’s early afternoon now, the sun high in the sky. When she turns off the ramp and reaches the stoplight at the end, she reaches out and jostles his shoulder. His eyes open slowly. 

“Hey, sorry to wake you but we’re almost there.”

Bellamy sits up and blinks at their surroundings. The light changes to green and Clarke accelerates. 

“How long was I out?”

“A little over an hour.”

“Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“S’okay.”

They stop in a shopping center 15 minutes away from the house. Clarke goes to the supermarket to get boxes, tape, scissors, and a Sharpie. Bellamy offers to pick up lunch for both of them from Subway. They reunite by the car and eat their sandwiches sitting on the hood. 

“God, I hate it here,” Clarke remarks, as she watches the residents of Tolland go about their days. It’s an affluent suburb, with manicured lawns and well-maintained sidewalks. The families all look the same: white, preppy, cold. They’ve already received a handful of sideways glances from concerned parents. Probably because they’re two bedraggled young people, eating sandwiches in the parking lot, which must mean that they’re up to no good. 

Bellamy’s lips twitch up in something like a smile but he doesn’t say anything. He got a meatball sub. Tomato sauce sticks to the corners of his mouth but he doesn’t seem to notice. Clarke finds herself thinking it’s cute. After a few moments, she reaches out, wipes the sauce away with the back of her hand. 

“Can you stop mom-ing me?” Bellamy says but she feels his grin against her skin before she pulls her hand away. 

“Don’t you know that sloppy eating is a capital crime in Tolland? If someone saw you with meatball sub on your face, you’d be put to death.”

“At least I would die for a worthy cause.”

“It would be a good death. Sloppy eaters everywhere would thank you for your sacrifice.”

They finish eating in comfortable silence. Bellamy throws away her trash without asking. As she watches him walk toward the trash can, she realizes how much she will miss him and the small ways he finds to take care of her. The feeling almost knocks her over and it takes every ounce of strength she holds to keep it from overtaking her. 

The summer’s going to be over soon and when it ends, so will her and Bellamy. 

Her face must reflect what she’s feeling because he asks her if she’s okay once they get back into the car. It takes her a moment to settle the torrent of emotions that’s brewing in her chest. She forces a smile and says she’s fine. Then, she starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

*

“When was the last time you were home?” Bellamy asks. They’ve just turned onto the street that leads to the gated community the house sits in. Trees tower over them and only a little bit of sun is able to peek through the leaves, casting shadows that look like geometry class across the car’s dashboard. 

Clarke furrows her brow as she tries to remember. “Honestly, I haven’t spent more than a couple nights here since I graduated high school.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Mom doesn’t really like being here either so we usually spend our holidays and summers elsewhere.” 

“Since your dad died?”

“Yep.”

Bellamy makes a noise in his throat that sounds something like sympathy. “I liked him,” he says.

Clarke tries to swallow but can’t, a painful, hard lump caught in her throat. 

“He liked you too,” she replies. Jake had always had such fondness for Bellamy. It had upset her when she was a kid - so used to being the sole recipient of her father’s attention and affection. But, now, thinking of it now warms her heart. Makes her feel closer to her father’s memory than she has in months. 

“Really?”

“Yeah, he thought you were a good kid. Smart. He found your inability to follow the rules charming.”

Bellamy chuckles. 

They reach the gate that leads into the community. Clarke punches her family’s code into the keypad and the gates swing open, almost painfully slow. After what feels like a comically long time, they finally open enough for Clarke’s car to fit through.

Her family’s house is toward the back, down a series of winding turns. It’s one of the biggest houses - purchased by her mother’s parents when Abby told them that she was pregnant with Clarke. Her maternal grandparents had never been particularly subtle people. 

It had been odd, growing up in such a large home, meant for so many more people than three. As a child, Clarke had wondered if the empty rooms promised brothers and sisters. With every passing year, that became less likely. When she was older, her mother explained to her that her birth had been an arduous one and there were moments when the doctor had told Jake Griffin to prepare for the worst: leaving the hospital by himself. However, Abby and Clarke had survived and Jake drove them home in his beat-up old Toyota Corolla that Abby hated three days later. Clarke’s birth had proved too traumatic to make the Griffins want to try again. 

Her mother’s car is parked in the driveway. Even though Clarke knows she should expect it, that Abby wouldn’t have brought her car to Italy, it still gives her a jolt and she slams her foot on the brakes a little too hard when she pulls in behind it. Seeing her mom’s car in front of the house had always made her blood run cold growing up. Abby being home meant rules, order. When she was gone, Clarke felt free to be a child. 

They get out of the car. Bellamy moves to help her with the boxes without her asking. She tries to carry at least one but he shakes his head, folds all of them under his arm. Her eyes catch a little too hard on the width of his shoulders and tensing of his muscles. The idle jangling of her keys in her hand snaps her back to reality. 

The door to her childhood home is large like doors in movies are, all ornate woodwork carvings and curled metal. She hasn’t been home in so long she almost forgot which key opens the door. She fumbles for a few moments. It’s only then that she notices that her hands are shaking. 

Bellamy reaches out, grasps her trembling hand in his and takes the keys from her. “Is it this one?” he asks, holding up the one her fingers had gotten stuck on. She nods. He slips the key into the lock and opens the door. For the first time, she registers that he has hands like her father - strong and long, with callouses along his middle finger of his right hand from writing too much in his notebook.

“Thank you,” she says. He places her keys in her hand. Gives her one of his soft smiles. 

“Don’t mention it.”

*

Sound reverberates a little too strong in a house as empty as this one. Every step they take echoes for what feels like forever. It’s the home she remembers, beautiful and soulless, and artfully decorated by an interior designer that Abby hired right after Jake’s funeral. “Changing your surroundings is supposed to help with grief,” Abby had explained, her words delivered through a tight-lipped smile.

“Fuck, I forgot how nice this place is.”

“Can we just pack up my shit and get out of here?”

As she speaks, Bellamy wanders into the living room. His eyes flit about the room, every bit of furniture, decor, artwork looking straight out of an issue of Kinfolk. Her father’s family had been rich in the way of people who had been in New England for far too long and Abby had put their money to good use trying to scrub the home of the memory of their son.

She stands on the edge of a plush patterned rug. Bellamy walks across it with his shoes still on. He seems to be cataloging every detail of rich people-minimalist bullshit. Then, his eyes fall on the bar cart, perched in the corner of the room. It was vintage, procured by the interior designer at an estate sale. Sitting on top are different varieties of liquor in bottles so ornate they looked as though they could be pieces of art themselves. Bellamy picks up a bottle of whiskey that only has a couple of fingers taken out of it. Distantly, Clarke registers that her mother hates whiskey and she must be keeping it around for Marcus.

“We could do that. But, we could also make this at least a little fun,” he offers. There’s that twinkle of mischief in his eyes that she hated when they were children but now, it rouses something inside her that’s been asleep for a long time. He picks up the bottle, uncorks it, and takes a swig. Then, he passes it to Clarke. 

She takes it but her grip around the bottle isn’t too confident. “But, then we can’t drive home.”

“That’s not that big of a deal. Don’t you have to meet the realtor here tomorrow? Were you really planning on making the drive between here and the beach house twice?”

Clarke frowns. He has a good point. She’d been so overwhelmed by her mother’s request that she hadn’t really given much thought to logistics. Beyond that, she hadn’t thought that Bellamy would be willing to spend more time on this excursion than absolutely necessary. He had just told the night before that he had to focus on his dissertation now more than ever. 

“But, she’ll notice that the whiskey’s gone.”

There’s something strange in the way Bellamy looks at her. It’s new type of tenderness - the kind that’s almost too much. It’s after a few moments that she realizes it’s pity. 

Clarke opens the bottle and takes a swig.

“Fine. But, we’re getting pizza for dinner.”

*

By the time they stumble up the stairs to her childhood bedroom, they’re both a little tipsy. Clarke feels a flush inching its way up her neck and Bellamy’s cheeks are tinged pink. For the second time today, she finds herself marveling at how goddamn cute he is. 

The door to her room is closed. There’s a sign on the door that she made when she was 13: “Clarke’s Room - KEEP OUT!” While the message is not particularly artistic, she had taken the time to decorate the edges with barbed wire and flowers. She’s sure that 13 year old Clarke found the image aesthetically pleasing. However, now, as a 21 year old, she can’t help but grimace as she pushes the door open. Bellamy, to his credit, doesn’t say anything, though there’s a brightness in his eyes that suggest he’s laughing just a little at her expense. 

Her room is unchanged. A stark white bed frame from Pottery Barn takes up most of the room. Her bedspread is a predictable bright pink and covered in flowers, a relic from middle school that she’s never gotten around to replacing. Off to the side, there’s a desk -where she used to draw. Next to it, there’s a door that leads to a walk-in closet with more room than Clarke’s ever been able to fill. Her walls are for the most part bare, apart from some movie posters. Her walls used to be covered with her artwork, before she had given up on that dream and stuffed them all underneath her bed so she wouldn’t have to look at them anymore. 

“Cute,” Bellamy remarks. He walks over to her bed and takes a seat. His grown man body looks so silly on her bed, all long limbs and broad shoulders. He bounces a little and the bed creaks. 

He reaches out and grabs the too big teddy bear that her dad once won her at an amusement park near the beach house. She had been a little too old for it, fourteen years old and already becoming the special type of shitty reserved for teenage girls who were too smart for their own good. However, it had became special to her in the way of the relics the dead left behind before they even had the slightest idea that their time was coming to an end. 

Bellamy lifts the bear up, smiles at it like it’s a human child, then sets it back down. Stares around the room and takes in all the other remnants of her girlhood: a plush periwinkle rug, sitting beneath her desk, a bookcase full of YA books and other children’s literature, with some more grown-up stuff mixed in, a pile of Teen Vogues from the years 2011-2015, an unholy amount of hair ties strewn across her dresser, an earring tree that she had gotten from Claire’s, studded with cheap metal that she’s sure turned her ears green.

Clarke blushes a deep pink. She’s never felt more naked before him than she does right now, wearing jeans and a big t-shirt and standing in the middle of her childhood bedroom. 

“Whatever. Can you stop memorizing details that you’re gonna use to make fun of me later and help me pack like you’re supposed to?”

“Clarke, I’m a great multi-tasker. I’m pretty sure I can do both at the same time.” 

He motions for her to hand him the bottle of whiskey. Clarke passes it along and uses her free hand to assemble a box. They settle into packing, starting with her books and then branching outward. They pass the handle between them as they work. Every once in a while, Bellamy makes fun of something of hers and she’ll roll her eyes but, they mostly work in a buzzy silence.

Before long, they’re both drunk and sick of packing. Belatedly, Clarke realizes that alcohol and getting shit done don’t really go together. 

She tapes up the box she stuffed all of her childhood stuffed animals into. Bellamy’s just finished all of her books and has set his sights on clearing every surface of knick-knacks. To his credit, he’s much better at packing than she is - which makes sense - given the fact that one of the things she’s learned this summer is that Bellamy is somehow secretly good at everything that she’s terrible at. 

He picks up one of her high school yearbook, wedged between her night stand and her bed. She must have dropped it there the last time she had spent the night in this room. With a smile that’s both sharp and fond, he picks up the book and flips to a random page. Much to Clarke’s chagrin, it’s a spread all about the school’s cheerleaders. Her face, bright and smiling, is featured prominently in almost every group photo. Before he can open his mouth to make fun of her, she pulls the yearbook out of his hand, her cheeks so red she can feel the heat radiating off of her skin. 

“Don’t say a goddamn word,” she says, still blushing. Bellamy laughs. Before she can turn away from him in shame, he reaches out and pulls her tight to his chest so she can’t get away from him. At first, she pretends to resist but after a few moments of his heart beating against her cheek, she relents, lets her body melt into him.

“I didn’t know you were a cheerleader,” she feels him say through the vibrations of his chest against her skin. There’s something too rough about his voice. She tips her head up to see him looking at her with the heat that’s only reserved for the moments when his attraction to her catches him off guard - like when she walks into the kitchen in one of her dad’s t-shirts, threadbare with holes around the collar. 

It’s at least a little fucked up, the way that her body reacts. More and more lately, she’s been feeling this pull to him - almost like there’s a tractor beam emanating from his dick that she just can’t shake. Just the night before, she sucked him off while he was working on his dissertation for no real reason other than she was hungry for the taste of his cum on her tongue. She still remembers the wild way he looked at her when she crawled up his legs from under the table - how it made her so wet that she begged for him to fuck her and he ate her out until he got hard again, on the leather couch that Marcus had added to the library that previous year to make the space more “homey,” and then fucked her until she was begging for release, her hair wrapped around his fist and his fingers hooked into her mouth, holding her in place.

She leans away from him. Watches his eyes flick from her face to her tits, yearbook completely forgotten on the side of the bed. 

“You know, I used to think about you being here, with me,” she finds herself saying, the thought not even fully realized before it falls out of her mouth. His mouth drops open the slightest bit, eyes wide, before his lips pull up in the slightest hint of a grin, dark and warm. 

“Oh, yeah? What would you think about me doing?” He leans in a little. She smells the whiskey on his breath, can see his pupils eat up his eye. 

She blushes a little. “Well, I’ve had a crush on you since I was like thirteen. Then, I’d mostly think about us kissing. You being nice to me. But, when I got older…” she trails off, suddenly getting a little shy. She ducks her head a little so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. Before she can get too far, he catches her chin in his hand and jerks her head upward, his grip the slightest pressure. 

“Finish.”

She hears his hunger for her in the way his voice cracks. A sick thrill climbs up Clarke’s spine and whatever shame she was experiencing before seems to evaporate. She meets his eyes. 

“I would think about you touching me. All over. Making me moan. Making me come,” she says, her voice just above a whisper. 

The left side of his mouth quirks up a little. The house is silent - the only real noise the sound of their chests rising and falling. His grip on her jaw tightens a little. She wants to tell him he could squeeze harder - that she can take it, that she can take anything that he could possibly throw at her, but before she can speak, he silences her with a kiss, crushing and brutal and everything all at once.

His hand only drops from her face once he’s gotten her right where he wants her - in the middle of the bed, head resting against too many decorative pillows. His body hovers above her. It’s overwhelming, having him close like this, especially when he presses himself against her and captures her mouth in another kiss, this one even deeper than the last. 

It’s so much more than what they’ve shared pressed against walls, against tables, in whatever corner of the vacation house they’d decided to fuck in that day. Clarke registers, distantly, as she nips at his bottom lip and Bellamy growls into her mouth, that this is the first time they’ve kissed in bed.

It had been an unspoken rule - one that both of them seemed to follow mostly out of fear of breaking the status quo - but now that they’re finally here, she cannot help but be angry that she denied herself this for so long: the pressure of his body against hers, the tickle of his curls against her forehead, the safety she feels from the way his elbows are framing her head. She finds herself slipping her hands up his shirt, skimming her fingers over the hard planes of warm muscle she finds there. There’s so much of him she’s never touched, never had access to: his back, his shoulders, his neck, his ass, and she finds herself searching for each part hungrily, trying to memorize every detail. Even though they’re kissing right now, she still can’t escape the knowledge that he isn’t hers. 

When he pulls away, his mouth is swollen and a little bruised from the way she’s been sucking and biting at him. “Fuck, Clarke,” he murmurs, reverent, before pressing a chaste kiss to her lips. “Never going to get enough of you,” he adds as he trails his way from her mouth to her neck to her collarbone, sucking and nipping at every bit of exposed skin available to him. 

Her mouth falls open in surprise at his words. She almost says something but before she can, he yanks her shirt off of her and pulls her bra cup down so he can suck her nipple into his mouth and effectively renders her speechless - the only sound she’s capable of making a breathless, jagged moan. 

She twists her fingers through his hair. He flicks his tongue against her like he has something to prove, moving his other hand to rub against her other breast. It’s a harsh pleasure, the type that eats at your bones. Her body tenses and she registers how wet she is already, how desperate she is for his cock. 

“Do you have a condom?” she breathes. He nods, slips a hand into the pocket of his jeans and places the golden foil packet on her bedside on the table. She raises an eyebrow. “

“You just had that on you?” 

He shrugs. “Clarke, we’ve been fucking everywhere lately. I thought I might as well come prepared.”

He has a good point. 

She helps him out of his shirt. Slides her hand down the defined ‘v’ of his lower stomach and unbuttons his jeans. His stomach jumps a little under her fingertips. “Ticklish,” he mutters, a flush creeping up his neck. Clarke can’t help but giggle, overwhelmed all at once by the softness of him.

His skin is warm and hot. When she wraps her hand around his cock, his mouth falls open. “Fuck,” he breathes, as she starts to jerk him off. He falls to his elbows. She takes a special sort of delight in watching his face go slack with pleasure. Moves her hand slower so she can draw it out. It doesn’t take long before he’s panting against the side of her neck. 

“Clarke, stop,” he grinds out. 

She grins, flushed with the special type of accomplishment that comes with shattering the mask he always seems to don whenever they have sex - acting all confident and cool and in control. She gives him a few more strokes, just to fuck with him, but pulls away before he gets too worked up. Once her hands free, he grasps them, pins them above her head. 

“You’re gonna pay for that,” he says. There’s something dancing in his eyes that she can’t quite place - something like mischief but sharper, more intentional. He uses his free hand to undo her jeans and slide them off of her along with her underwear.

For a moment, he just stares at her, his eyes greedy. She realizes with a start that this is the first time he’s seen her completely naked, that he’s been able to take his time with her. He reaches out and cups her breast like it’s something holy. 

“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmurs. Before she can say anything, stutter some form of gratitude or disbelief, he fucks a finger into her. It slides in easily, her pussy already drenched. Immediately, he finds the spot inside her that makes her spine feel like it’s melting and rubs at it while his thumb draws rough circles against her clit. 

Like he’s flipped a switched, she’s completely at his mercy again. Mewling, trembling, writhing. His hand tightens around her wrists. It hurts but in the way he knows she likes. He uses it as leverage, forces her body down into the mattress so she can’t pull his fingers deeper inside her with the movement of her hips. Her pleasure completely on his terms. 

God, and he fucking loves it. She can see it in his eyes - the special type of joy he seems to take in watching her reach the point where she’ll beg for it. He gives her another finger but doesn’t move it. The corner of his mouth quirks up. He leans in close and nips at her bottom lip. 

“You know what you need to say, Princess. Be a good girl for me. Be my good girl.”

She doesn’t hesitate anymore. “Please, Bellamy. Please. I need it. I need you to make me come.”

“That’s right, baby,” he says with a mean grin. He thrusts the second finger inside her. Then another. Thrusts so hard she cries out and there are tears in her eyes and it hurts but it also feels so goddamn good. When she feels him teasing a fourth against her entrance, she comes with a scream, drenching his arm. He fucks her through it, until her knees are trembling and she can’t stop saying his name. He only drops his hands from her wrists once she’s stopped shaking. 

He pulls his fingers out from inside her. Uses her wetness to slick up his dick, his eyes aflame with something dangerous. For a moment, she considers forgetting about the condom and letting him fuck her without anything between them. She has an IUD. He looks like he’s considering it too. Still, it feels like a bridge too far - something too intimate for their own good. Before she can change her mind, she rips the foil open and slides the condom on and then he’s kissing her, tongue and teeth and tenderness. 

He only pulls away once he’s inside her. 

She stares into his eyes as he does it. Watches the way they flutter closed for a few seconds at the initial squeeze of her, how he always needs to fuck her open a little. One elbow rests beside her head, the his other hand guiding his dick into her. He watches her just as much as she watches him. Sees the way her mouth falls open at the stretch of him. Registers the rapid rise-fall of her chest. Notices the way her eyes go wide like she wants to eat him whole. 

They’ve never really look each other in the eye when they’re having sex. She realizes now that that had been a gift - that she was never supposed to know the way his face opens when he hears her moan. Nor was he supposed to see the secret she’s been holding close to her chest ever since they kissed, that this is so much more than just sex to her and always has been. 

“Bellamy,” she whines. Her eyes fall closed. He moves the hand by her head to caress her cheek. He thrusts into her so slow it makes her body feel like it’s short-circuiting.  
“It’s okay, Princess. Let me see you. I need to see you,” he says, unable to keep desperation from cracking his voice. She opens her eyes for him. He looks like he’s breaking. She knows the feeling. 

They take their time with each other. She lets himself touch him, run her hands up and down his arms as he thrusts into her. Mapping out the entirety of his strong, broad back. Dipping to cup his ass whenever he thrusts into her particularly hard.

Distantly, she hears the sound of water falling against the roof and realizes it must have started raining. Sweat adheres her skin to his. With every thrust of his hips, he unspools the softest, most unhurried pleasure from her body. She wraps her legs around him and pulls him in deeper. He kisses her in gratitude, his tongue lazy against hers.

She doesn’t know how long they go on like that, fucking like they have all the time in the world. After what feels like forever, she realizes that she needs more. She wants the bruising feeling of his hipbones ramming into hers over and over and over again. 

She hitches her leg higher and pulls him closer. Bellamy gets the hint immediately. Drops from his hands to his elbows on either side of her head and sets a punishing rhythm that throws the bed against the wall over and over and over again. Until she’s more animal than girl, holding onto him for dear life as he pulls the most devastating orgasm from her body. It’s the kind that brings tears to her eyes and her come dripping down her thighs. The sound she makes is so loud she hears it reverberate throughout the house. He falls over the edge only a few seconds after she does. 

He collapses top of her. They lie like that until their sweat gets tacky. It hurts a little when they pull their skin apart so he can throw out the condom. Instead of getting up, he just falls to the side of her. He wraps his arm around her and pulls her head to his chest. She can hear his heartbeat, ricocheting through his ribcage. She’s sure hers is beating just as quickly.

Clarke knows this is the moment. This is when she should tell Bellamy what she’s fallen into and how she can’t seem to be able to pull herself out of it. But, when she opens her mouth to speak, nothing comes out. They lay there in silence for a little too long, listening to the sound of the storm and each other’s breathing. 

“Still want pizza?” Bellamy asks, his voice stilted and a little awkward. When she looks up at him, he won’t meet her gaze. 

“Yep.”

“Cool, I’ll make the call.”

He puts his clothes on and gets out of bed. His phone is laying on the ground, next to the yearbook. He picks it up and leaves the room. The door falls closed behind him.

As soon as she hears him go down the stairs, Clarke lets herself cry.


	8. Part VIII

She showers while they wait for the pizza. Due to her prolonged absence from the house, she’s forced to use body wash that she bought from Bath and Body Works at the mall the summer after her freshman year. It’s floral to the point of headache inducing and stings her nose a little with its pungency. Thankfully, it’s just enough to distract her from the self-pity bubbling in her stomach. 

God, she’s so sick of herself. Sick of her soft heart and the trouble it always seems to be getting her into. By the time the shower’s over, she’s made herself feel like shit at least one thousand times over, the special type of brow-beating that only a self-hating inner voice can provide. Once she’s dry and has slipped into an old pair of pajamas that was part of a matching set that Abby had bought a couple of years prior in an attempt to rekindle any type of meaningful connection between them. Obviously, it had not worked but the pajamas are a comfortable, well-worn flannel and they feel like a warm hug when Clarke slides them onto her cold, shivering body. 

He’s sitting on the couch when she finally gets downstairs. He’s found the living room, off to the side of the kitchen. A too big flat screen is hung on an aggressively white wall opposite the hallway that leads into the back of the house. 

“Pizza’ll be here in 15,” he says, eyes focused on the television. She can smell all the cigarettes he must have smoked while she was in the shower from across the room. His mouth is in a fine line, his clicking on the channel buttons more of a tick than any real sort of meditated action. 

For some reason, she finds herself wondering if he cried too, when he realized the hell they’ve pulled into each other into. 

“Cool. Thanks for ordering it,” she says, her voice creaking a little from the awkwardness. She takes a seat at the other end of the couch. She notices that the whiskey is still in Bellamy’s hand. He offers to pass it to her but she shakes her head. She’s starting to realize her, Bellamy, and alcohol are a terrible combination. He shrugs and takes a swig of it before setting it on the coffee table. 

The television settles on one of the cooking channels, a likable woman preparing a meal that she claims is for her husband and his friends. They both watch, but she can hear how little attention he’s paying from the way he’s jiggling his leg against the white leather of the couch and tapping his fingers against the arm rest like he has learned he does when his mind’s off somewhere else, thinking about something too difficult to say out loud. 

“I think I’m gonna finish packing tomorrow morning,” she says, finally. He looks up and their eyes meet for the first time since he left her childhood bedroom. There’s something too raw about the way he’s looking at her and her stomach twists a little. Before she can say anything, it disappears from his face - like a flash, and he’s left with that mask of his, unreadable and distant. 

“Okay. I can still help, if you want.”

There’s a fragility in his words that she can’t quite place. She raises an eyebrow. “Of course I want you to help. There’s no way I’ll be able to finish without you,” she says. A smile breaks across his face, small with surprise, almost like he expected her to tell him to fuck off. 

Before he can say anything in response, the doorbell goes off. He jumps to his feet and goes to answer it. She hears him exchange pleasantries with the pizza delivery person and their small gasp of gratitude when Bellamy tips them entirely too much money. While he’s gone, she grabs some plates, cutlery, and glasses from the kitchen. She fills the glasses using the water dispenser on her mother’s too expensive refrigerator that talks to you and tell you what the weather is (as it happens, it’s currently 67 degrees outside, with rain showers continuing on and off for the rest of the night). He returns to the room with two pizzas, which she already knows is one pepperoni and one Hawaiian, from all the other times they’ve ordered pizza together. 

They each take a couple slices and settle on the floor, their backs resting on the couch. Both of them considered eating pizza on a white sofa too great a risk, especially since they’re both still a little drunk. When they sit down again, they’re just a little closer to each other, which Clarke thinks must be a good sign. Even though she knows that she should be distancing herself from him, she cannot bear to actually do it. After spending so much time in close quarters, she’s become to accustomed to the gentle warmth of his body next to hers when they eat dinner, the way their elbows always knock into each other once or twice because Bellamy talks with his hands. 

She lets herself be filled by this moment. The easiness of their back and forth as they discuss whether this pizza is better than the pizza they usually get back at the vacation house, the soft give of the plush carpet beneath their bodies, the learned comfort that has taken root between them. There’s a humming in her chest at a frequency she’s never quite registered before, only silenced by the occasionally swallow of pizza or whenever he makes her laugh. 

It almost soothes the ache from before. Almost. But, as they finish up eating and their bodies sag with sleep, he turns to her, his face suddenly grave, and tells her he’s going to sleep on the couch. His words make her grip on the plates clumsy and they clatter against the counter top a little too loudly. 

“There’s guest rooms upstairs, Bellamy,” she says but he shakes his head. Even though she wishes she could pretend not to, she knows why. Upstairs is too close, the temptation for one of them to sneak into the other’s bed too present. She’s aware because she’s been fantasizing about that very idea all dinner. 

She shows him when the extra blankets and pillows are, in the linen closet across from the staircase. He smiles in thanks. It’s around midnight, earlier than both of them usually go to sleep, but they’ll have to get an early start tomorrow, if they want to be done with packing before the realtor shows up in the afternoon. 

He picks up a fleece blanket that Clarke remembers from every sleepover she’s ever had and a set of pillows. She closes the door to the closet. They stand there, their silence damning. After a few terrible moments, Clarke decides that she should just go to bed and put an end to this bullshit. 

“Night,” she says. She turns to go up the stairs but he grabs her wrist, stopping her in her tracks and then suddenly he’s kissing her, his body soft and warm against hers and the bannister digging a little into her back. Clarke knows she should pull away but can’t, her body drawn to his like the moth to the flame, knowing that he holds the power to destroy her but she’s still unable to resist. 

They pull away from each other only when they’re both lightheaded and their lips are kiss bruised.

“Goodnight, Clarke,” he says and there’s mourning in his voice. He drops her wrist and turns away, blanket and pillows under his arm. The sound of his feet against the polished wood of the floor echo through her whole body. 

She retreats upstairs only when her heart stops thundering through her body. 

Clarke falls asleep after getting herself off twice with one hand pressed to her lips, trying to memorize what his goodnight kiss felt like.

*

She wakes with a start, unsure of where she is. After a few disorienting moments, she’s finally able to process that she’s at her mom’s house, that she fell asleep with her hand still in her underwear from the last time she got herself off, and that Bellamy is asleep downstairs, far away from her. 

Her dreams had been unpleasant, twisted imaginings of her father’s funeral that somehow segued into her mother and Marcus’s wedding. She had been able to jolt herself awake during a particularly unpleasant one - where her father’s decaying corpse stood in the place of a minister and pronounced the happy couple husband and wife, but she fell asleep right after she was able to slow her racing heart and convince herself it was just a dream. What followed had been even more unsettling - new scenarios where Abby and Kane were replaced by her and Bellamy at the alter, saying their vows, while her mother screamed at the side: “you ruin everything, you ruin everything, you ruin everything.”

Her heart stutters in her chest as the images from the night before flash through her mind once more, vivid and gnarled and red. She used to have night terrors as a child, had often woken up in this very room, screaming. It makes sense that she would be revisited by such terrible twisting of her dormant mind now that she’s slept here again. She just didn’t expect them to be so fucked up.

“Shit,” she mutters as she realizes it’s 9:37am, a solid hour and a half later than her and Bellamy were planning on waking up. From the the distinct lack of noise coming from downstairs, she thinks it’s fair to assume that he hasn’t woken up on time either.

Clarke jumps out of bed and throws on her clothes from yesterday. Luckily, she’s able to find a clean pair of underwear from high school buried in the back of one of her dresser drawers, complete with with a hole in the crotch and some weird lace ruching across the butt. 

She flies down the stairs. As she predicted, all the lights are off and she can her the low hum of Bellamy snoring in the living room. They have a little over 3 hours until the realtor shows up, which is just barely enough time to get everything done. 

“Fuck me,” Clarke mutters under her breath. Already, her head is throbbing with the combination of having a little too much to drink and not getting enough sleep. She makes her way to the living room, only to find Bellamy sprawled across the couch, without a shirt on, in light grey boxer briefs, his hair a mess, and a drool caked on his face. The fleece blanket that she gave him before is twisted around his body and the pillows have fallen to the ground sometime in the night. She smiles, overcome by fondness. 

She presses her hand to his shoulder to jostle him awake. He’s sleep warm and solid. His muscle jumps at the pressure of her fingers. “Bell, wake up,” she says. Immediately, his whole body stiffens and his eyes fly open.

“What time is it?” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes. He sits up. Without Clarke’s consent, her eyes wander and she notices that he’s definitely half-hard from sleep. She swallows. Tries to look anywhere but at his dick. 

“9:50. The realtor’s going to be here at 1.”

Bellamy groans. “Shit, I must have slept through my alarm,” he says. He reaches for his clothes, kicked unceremoniously to the foot of the couch and puts them on. 

“S’okay. I did too.”

He folds up the blanket and places it on the couch, alongside the pillows he’s retrieved from the floor. 

“What do you want to do about breakfast?”

Clarke sighs. She’s gotten so used to Bellamy cooking for her everyday that she forgot that breakfast was something that had to be thought about. 

“Dunno - I doubt my mom has much in the kitchen since she’s been gone since May.”

He frowns. Unease twists Clarke’s stomach. She can’t stand feeling like she’s inconvenienced him. “But, I’m sure we can find something,” she adds, trying to sound optimistic. They walk into the kitchen. 

Predictably, there’s little in the fridge and what is there is fucking weird - Abby’s vitamins, a molding carton of almond milk creamer, a sagging, wet tomato, a carton of eggs that looks to be from six months ago, a jar of sunflower butter, and a handful of cherries, bleeding across the vegetable drawer. Clarke knows better than to just attribute this to Abby being out of town - the fridge is probably this sad all year round. A far cry from what it had been like when her father had been alive - teeming with organic produce, thick slabs of various cheeses, fresh cuts of meat, and a myriad of different types of sauces and seasonings from cultures all over the world. Her parents had loved cooking - it was one of the few activities that they could do together without fighting. They had so many cookbooks they had to have a separate bookcase for them and Clarke glances over at where it sits, next to pantry, dusty and sad with inattention and lack of use. Once Jake died, her mother stopped cooking. Abby and Clarke ate a steady diet of fancy frozen meals from Whole Foods, with take-out mixed in whenever even turning on the oven seemed like too much work. 

Bellamy finds some protein bars in the pantry so they eat those quickly. Clarke brews a pot of coffee and they suck it down, both bleary eyed from lack of sleep. After, they head upstairs, having barely exchanged more than pleasantries, delivered by stiff tongues and pursed lips. 

Once they’re in her room and packing together, there’s no denying the distance that’s taken root between them. The way he seems to move in anticipation of avoiding her fingers brushing against his as they place items into boxes. She feels herself doing the same, almost as if her body has learned instinctually that no good comes of them being close, that it will just drag them both farther down into this hell that they’ve created together. 

They don’t talk much as they pack and she’s glad for it because she does not even know what to say, her feelings toward him hidden so deep inside her that she cannot fathom how she would be able to find them. 

He moves quickly, from clothes to books to odds-and-ends. Clarke, on the other hand, gets stumped on mementos, the small items that she knows she should probably throw away but can’t seem to part with. Her chest fills with something heavy and she holds everything in her hands for far too long: a panda keychain that Wells gave her from when he visited Beijing with Theolonius before freshman year, a cheap necklace that her first boyfriend gave her in middle school, a birthday card from her parents, the last one both of them signed. Heat creeps up her neck as she realizes that Bellamy must be noticing, must be resentful of her for taking so long.

She wonders if he regrets coming with her now. If he too has discovered something he didn’t wish to here - the reality of what they’ve become. She wonders if this wouldn’t have happened if she had gone to the house alone - that this place has some sort of cosmic power that ruins everything in her life.

Eventually, she puts a podcast on so she doesn’t have to listen to herself think anymore. It’s an old episode of This American Life that she’s sure both of them have heard before. She lets herself be carried away from the tension by the sound of Ira Glass’s voice and the tinny intro music. She clears off her desk. Then, the tops of all her bookcases. Bellamy holds up items of clothing for her to look at and she tells him to get rid of all of it. 

“All of it? You sure?”

He looks over at the trash bag filled with everything she’s planning on giving away. It’s full to the brim. She shrugs. “I mean, why should I keep it around? All this shit just makes me sad,” she says. 

She watches the way pity clouds his eyes. Makes her heart drop into her stomach. She feels tears stinging at her eyes but she’s able to blink them away before he notices. 

“Clarke-“

She’s terrified of what he might say - interrupts him before he can get much farther. “Listen, I can finish the rest of this up. How about you go smoke a cigarette or something? You’ve helped enough.”

Something flickers over his face that makes her heart hurt. Like, she’s speared him where he’s most sensitive. “Fine,” he says and his tone is cold and final. He gets up, refusing to look her in the eye. She sees him pause at the threshold, fingertips brushing against the smooth metal of the doorknob. 

“You know, you can’t run away from what you’re feeling forever,” he says but before she can reply, he opens the door and slams it closed behind him. 

*

His words eat at the softest parts of her. She sits there, in her room, filled with everything remnant of who she’s been, all stuffed into bags heading to either the dump or Goodwill. 

God, he can be such a sanctimonious asshole sometimes. She had forgotten about that, so lost in the small tendernesses that they have shared over the past month. She lets that fury fill her up to avoid the unpleasantness that comes with actually listening to his words and letting them press into her heart because he’s right, he’s right, he’s always fucking right.

Because, running away from her sadness is perhaps the only way she can even fathom to deal with the darkness that rises up in her sometimes, that attacks any chance at happiness like a rapid dog. She’s never learned how to sit with it. How to let anguish wash over you. She’s only learned how to move faster. Work harder. Fall deeper into forgetting herself in media that she’s barely paying attention to. Do everything she can to keep her mind off of the void opening up inside her chest and how it threatens to swallow her whole. 

In the background, Ira Glass talks about some unknowable truth that, upon further examination, seems so obvious. It’s loud enough to cover the sound of her breath getting stuck in her throat. After a few tortuous moments, she manages to suck down some air and do the only thing she knows how to do: pretend everything’s okay so she can get shit done. 

The only items left are those stuffed into nooks and crannies, secrets that she had been keeping from herself. She finds a diary from middle school that she deposits unceremoniously in the trash bag. Then, a collection of notes that she and Wells wrote back and forth to each other one summer at the vacation house. That goes into the trash as well but she hesitates a bit more, a slight tremor in her wrist when she finally lets them go. 

She takes care of everything she can think of, until the only items that’s left are the ones waiting for her under the bed. Whose presence she has been acutely aware of ever since she walked into this house, but that she has spent the entirety of this visit ignoring. 

Clarke sucks in another breath.

With a shaking hand, she reaches beneath to pull out a large box, filled with every piece of art she created between the ages of 11 and 18. She had begun with sketches, small likenesses of the people she loved. Once her father noticed her talent, he signed her up for classes, bought her supplies. Her mother hadn’t said anything, observed with one of her tight-lipped smiles. From sketches, she branched out to watercolor. Then oil. Then acrylic. By the time she had graduated high school, she would spend her weekends on large impressionist landscapes of worlds she’d dream up in the soft space between day and night, when she was just on the edge of waking. 

She abandoned them beneath her bed after she started college. It hurt too much to look at them once she knew that she had no future as an artist and that her dream had to die. Holding this box in her hands right now, it feels dangerous. Like what she finds inside could destroy the small peace she’s given herself with the way she’s buried all of her hopes and dreams so deep inside her she doesn’t know the shape of them anymore. 

The episode of This American Life has ended, leaving Clarke alone with the sound of her pulse, pounding so hard it hurts. She opens the box and slides the first drawing out, a portrait she had done of her father, grading papers at his favorite table at the vacation house. 

Her heart sinks. She closes up the box and remembers nothing good will come from continuing to dig up the part of herself that she’s tried so hard to forget about.

She does not know why she let herself down like this. She knows that she could have fought back. Her mother is not a monster. She would not have disowned her for wanting to pursue her dreams of being an artist. Still, she couldn’t do it. Not with how destroyed she had been after the blow of losing her father and then Wells. They had been the only people who had truly believed in her, who had thought her dreams with worth pursuing. Without them, she lost sight of herself. Didn’t have the strength to push forward on her own, not after what their deaths had done to her. 

Still, she does not have the strength to throw the box away She stands there, holding it, for what feels like forever. 

The door opens. Bellamy returns. His mouth is in a fine line and he reeks of cigarette smoke. 

“What’s that? More trash?”

Something about him unknowingly calling her art trash makes her grip the box protectively. 

“No.”

He raises an eyebrow. Stares at the box in her arms. “Well, what is it then?”

“Something I’m not ready to throw away yet.”

His mouth opens to ask but before he can, the doorbell rings. “The realtor’s here. Can you put this in the car for me? I’ll handle her and then we can go,” she says, before he can say anything. 

Bellamy takes the box from her. “And the rest?”

They look around the room at what’s left of her past life. The movers will take the furniture to the storage unit when Abby moves at the end of the summer. She has filled two boxes with everything she’d like to keep, mostly books and decorations. All her clothing, sheets, and other linens are in a bag that they’re going to take to Goodwill on their way out of town. The trash they’ll toss in the gated community’s dumpster. 

“Just these two boxes. I’ll grab them on the way out.”

He nods. Gives her one of his looks, the type that always softens her. Makes her desperate for his touch. “You okay?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I’m fine. See you in the car?”

He does not seem to like that answer but has learned by now that it’ll be a while before he gets anything more insightful. “I guess,” he says before picking up the box. He leaves the room and she follows. The realtor is standing outside the door, a small woman with big hair and an even bigger smile. She waves at Clarke through one of the windows beside the door. 

Bellamy opens the door, says some pleasantries and then makes his way to the car. The realtor comes in. “Are you Clarke?” she asks, her voice bright and tinny. 

“Yep. And, you must be Cece.” 

The realtor nods, smile still pasted onto her face. “Who’s the young man helping you?” she asks, her grin suggestive. “Is he your boyfriend?”

Clarke’s heart bangs against her ribcage, painful and loud. 

“No. He’s Marcus’s son. He’s just doing me a favor,” she says, trying to keep her voice calm and even. 

Cece’s smile falters for a bit that snaps into place once more. “Oh, that’s so sweet. You’re already acting like a family.”

Clarke pales. “Yeah. Really sweet,” she mutters, distantly. She gives Cece the tour of the house, just like her mother asked her to. But, the whole time, she can’t stop imagining a world where Cece’s first assumption’s true and Bellamy’s her boyfriend and he’s helping her because he loves her, not because he pities her. 

*

When Cece has driven away, Clarke walks outside to her car. Bellamy’s leaning against it, arms crossed across his chest. “How’d it go?” he asks as she locks the door behind her and down the steps to the driveway. 

“It was fine. She’s going to have a staging crew come in next week and get it ready for the market. She says she doesn’t think it’ll take long to sell.”

She unlocks her car and deposits both boxes in the backseat. He gets in and she follows. Turns the car on. It hits her that this will probably be the last time she sees this house. The last time she’ll be able to stand where her father stood, remember what it was like when his voice echoed throughout the home, asking her to come down for dinner. Her hands stutter on the steering wheel. She knows she needs to leave but can’t will herself to move the emergency brake so she can reverse out of the driveway. 

“Clarke-“ Bellamy starts but she shakes her head, a sob building in her throat. “Please. Please don’t say anything,” she says, her voice breaking. She disengages the emergency break and puts the car into reverse. Finds their way out of the driveway and out of the neighborhood, all while tears leak out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

Bellamy, thankfully, does not speak. But, he does reach out and grasp her shoulder, soothing his thumb against her collarbone until her breathing no longer feels like inhaling broken glass. 

*

They don’t talk much the rest of the drive and she’s glad for it. Not knowing what even there is to talk about, her heart too raw and hurt. She feels stuck between two terrible feelings: the very present loss of her childhood home and the future loss of Bellamy and the small, false happiness this summer has afforded her. 

She’s been able to avoid letting her thoughts drift to what’s going to happen at the end of August for majority of the past couple months. However, now that July’s almost over, it’s becoming more difficult to ignore the creeping nature of time, how it moves along even when you’re not thinking about it. 

She wonders if Bellamy’s thinking about it too. Or, if he even gives a shit. He doesn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation during the drive home, almost as if he needs the silence too. When they get back to the vacation house, he helps her unload her belongings and drops them off in her room. He doesn’t say anything about her crying in the car, just reaches out and hugs her close before he leaves her room. Her head falls to his chest and she finds herself inhaling the smell of him and losing herself in the way it makes her heart sing. The safety being close to him brings. 

They hold each other for far too long and she feels his reluctance in the way he pulls away from her and the soft way he looks into her eyes after, when he tells her that he really needs to buckle down for the rest of the summer. “I owe Pike a draft of my first couple sections by mid-August. I’ve let myself get too distracted and fallen behind so I really need to focus,” he explains and she catches the edge in her voice, how he doesn’t quite blame her but that he knows that she’s part of the problem. 

She nods, tells him she’ll stay out of his hair. This is for the best, she tells herself, even though her heart hurts and she can feel her body already going into withdrawal, desperate for more of his soft roughness. He must have realized it too, the way she feels about him, He’s smart to want to distance himself from it, especially since there’s no chance he feels the same way. Not with Echo waiting for him in Cambridge. 

His mouth twitches up at her words, almost like he’s about to say something but has thought better of it. 

“Thanks, Clarke,” he says. Just like that, he’s gone, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the few belongings that she’s brought back from her mother’s house. 

Again, she finds herself gravitating the large box of her artwork. With timid hands, she opens it once more. She takes each individual piece out and lays them across the floor of her bedroom. It takes over an hour. Once she’s done, she walks around, taking in all the details. Remembering how she felt when she created each one. Letting herself exist in that pain and not running away from it, no better how badly she wants to. 

She stares at her work for hours, trying to remember the person she had been before. The fearlessness she used to hold in her body, the way she always felt like she was jumping out of her skin with eagerness to live. When she was fifteen, she spent most of her breaks from school staying up until dawn, painting or drawing or sketching, so caught up in the dizzy euphoria of inspiration.

She misses that version of herself. For the past couple years, she had spent so much time trying to convince herself that it was dead, that it had been killed by losing her father and then Wells and then kowtowing to her mother’s demands to focus solely on her Biological Sciences major and nothing else. But now, standing in this room, surrounded by everything she’s created, she feels a resurrection building inside her.

She texts Bellamy to let him know that she’s going out. Then, she’s back in the car, driving toward the nearest art supply store, the one she goes to whenever Bellamy’s grocery shopping. The owner smiles when she sees Clarke, almost like she recognizes the fire in her eyes. Clarke spends the next hour searching out all of her favorite paints and brushes and canvases, until her arms are full and her back is aching with the effort of carrying all of it around the store. 

Once she’s confident she has all the supplies she threw out when she left for college, she deposits them on the counter next to the cash register, grinning from ear to ear. Her total is astronomical, more money than she’s spent on herself in months, but she pays for it using the card that’s connected to the trust her father’s family set up for her when he died. 

A heaviness seems to lift from her body as she carries her supplies to the car. She smiles the whole drive home. And, then, when she opens the door to the house, she does not even think about Bellamy or her broken heart or wanting to join him in the library.

No, she just sets up a makeshift studio on the back patio and begins to paint for the first time in three years.

*

Bellamy finds her sometime after 1am. The night air is crisp against her skin but it isn’t enough to stop her or make her head inside. She turned on all the backyard lights around 7pm, when the sun started to go down and she realized she wasn’t ready to stop just yet. Dinner had been a Pop-Tart, fisted into her mouth with one hand while the other kept painting. She’s only stopped to get water, a snack, or use the bathroom. 

Her feet ache and her neck has a crick in it and her wrist burns a little whenever she moves it in a circle but she doesn’t give a shit, her body buzzing with the adrenaline of creation. 

“I was wondering where you were,” he says as he slides the glass door open and steps outside. Clarke startles at the sound of his voice. She has been so focused on painting that she almost almost forgot about him. 

Crickets hum in the distance. Clarke does not turn to face him, so caught up in what she’s doing. This painting has taken over her body. Her hand moves without forethought. Without planning. Like, it had been, when she was younger and unbroken. Still, she isn’t quite sure what it is - a sea of swirling blackness broken up with bursts of vibrant colors. She’s used watercolor so everything runs into each other in the way she likes. 

“Patio gets the best light,” she says. She pauses mid-stroke and rests her paintbrush against the edge of the easel. Her spine stiffens a little when she feels the heat of the gaze upon the back of her neck. Feels him taking in what she’s done.

She feels him come up behind her, his body a breath away from hers. Pink-tinged warmth climbs up her neck and fills her body with a gentle thrumming. 

“You’re painting again,” he says, his breath hot over her shoulder. She nods. Fights the urge to press her back against him, to eat up his warmth. 

“Yep.”

He takes another step, so he’s right behind her, looking right over her shoulder. Her spine stiffens. Having him this close, when she knows she shouldn’t, is driving her fucking crazy. Her body’s on high alert, suddenly painfully aware of his every movement, the way he tilts his head to get a better look, the rustling of his shirt as he rolls his sleeves up because it’s still a little warm, the calculated distance he’s created between them, such a small increment of space that she cannot deny how intentional it is, how hard he’s trying to stay away from her. 

She wonders if she will survive this. What she’s let him do to her, what they’ve done to each other. She wonders if that’s even what she wants or if her plan ever since this started was to let him ruin her, eat away at what’s left of her until the girl she used to be is gone and all that’s left is something new and brutal and honest.

His breath beats at her ear as he leans in closer take in the details - where the darkness bleeds into color and swirls of pink collide with bursts of green. 

“Holy shit, is this the fireworks from 4th of July?”

His words shatter the spell his proximity has cast on her. Clarke, at first, shakes her head, opens her mouth to tell him that this just some weird abstract bullshit that’s fallen out of her and onto the large rectangle of paper, but then, suddenly, something clicks into place and she sees it now: the splashes of color so closely resembling the show they had saw that night, the warmth around the edges of the picture that she realizes now is from how close they had been sitting to each other as the colors flashed above them, the way their fingertips were just barely brushing. 

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

She does not know who initiates the kiss, who presses the other against the patio table or who bites at the other’s lip hungrily. Something happens in the moment that renders them no longer individuals, just a two-headed beast with the same desperate need and willingness to destroy everything to satisfy it. 

The metal of the patio table digs into her back as Bellamy fucks his tongue into her mouth. His kiss is not gentle and neither is hers. She feels a certain sort of anger threatening any softness that may develop between them as she pulls at his hair so she can kiss him deeper and he rucks up her shirt so he can pinch at her nipple. 

She remembers when she was a girl, they would eat dinner together at this table, with their families. She remembers how she would often spend most of the meal sneaking looks at him out of the corner of her eye. She would catalogue every twitch of his eyebrow, every quiver of his lip. Later, when she was alone in her room, she would pour over what she had observed - try to figure out what made him who he was. He had been the first person who had not been obvious to her, a too bright girl left to her own devices far too often. She puzzled over him for hours.

Now, even with his cock digging into the soft flesh of her thigh, his fingers pulling moans from her kiss bitten lips as he toys with her nipple, his heartbeat a desperate staccato against hers, the rasp of his five o’clock shadow against her face, he is still a mystery to her in a way no one else has ever been to her before. The more she’s learned about him, the more perplexing he has become.

She pulls away from him. 

“What’re we doing?” she says, finally. Her voice trembles with the weight of her words. She regrets them as soon as they fall from her lips, hates the way it closes his face, makes him a stranger. 

He takes a step back.

“Right now or in general?”

“Both.”

His hands fall to his sides and she sees him going into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. In that moment, she finds herself hating the fact that he smokes. That he has this convenient escape to otherwise occupy his hands and his mouth when all she can do is stare at him, hands balled into fists and her lip caught between her teeth. 

He lights his cigarette. Seems to savor the time it buys him, the distance it creates between them. 

“I was hoping you would know,” he says, something gentle that she once would have called teasing but here it is too sad, too heavy. She feels herself softening, the mistrust from before melting away. It’s almost enough to make her lean into his touch again but, right before her body begins to drift, she’s able to right herself.

“Well, then, we’re really fucked.”

His lips lift in a gesture that could be called a smile, if you squinted hard enough. He passes his cigarette to her and she takes a greedy drag that burns at her sides and she welcomes the pain.

“Well, wasn’t that part of it? That we knew this was a terrible idea but we decided to do it anyway?”

She nods. Remembers that night in the kitchen, the way she gave herself to him whole, like she had never done with anyone else before. There’s something about fucking Bellamy that’s like being eaten alive. She’s watched him savor every bit of her as she lost more and more of herself. 

“I lied to you. At the beginning.”

He flicks the ash off of his cigarette. For some reason, he does not seem surprised. Almost as if her being a liar is part of what he’s come to expect from her. She does not like the way that makes her feel. Like she’s just as bad as her mother probably thinks she is. 

“About what?”

“Lexa. We aren’t on a break. She broke up with me. That’s why I came here…” she says but trails off once she feels her throat begin to constrict with the effort of what she’s saying as she remembers the cold, efficient way Lexa had broken her heart and how wild it had made her feel, knowing that she had finally lost her, the person that she had been so convinced would save her from the bottomless abyss that seemed to have opened up beneath her. How it made her feel like she had nothing to lose. That feeling had been exhilarating as much as it had been terrifying. She hadn’t wanted to live with it for too long, afraid of what it might have turned her into. What it might have made her do. 

“I was scared that if I stayed where I was that…that something might have happened. That I might have…” she can’t finish the sentence. Lets it hang heavy on the air. He’s watching her like she usually watches him, eyes flitting back and forth, trying to catalogue every action, every movement. “So I came here. Because this was the last place I remembered being happy.”

“Why did you lie to me?” His tone isn’t accusatory. No, it’s something worse than that. Appraising. Like he’s trying to make sense of what she is to him after this confession.  
“Because I felt like a fuck up and I didn’t want you to think less of me. Especially since, you and Echo…You always seemed so happy. Like you guys were perfect together.

Something like a laugh leaves Bellamy’s mouth in an exhalation of smoke. “Trust me, we’re far from perfect,” he says. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He finishes his cigarette and crushes it into the patio table. “That just because I’ve managed to string along a woman on the promise that I’ll one day be able to commit to her doesn’t mean jack shit about whether I’m a fuck up or not.”

Clarke’s heart beats at her ribcage so hard it hurts. Immediately, she registers that the Bellamy she’s seeing right now is different than all the others. More raw, more honest. The mask he usually wears gone. She takes a step closer to him, emboldened by his vulnerability. 

“Raven told me that she broke up with you because you wouldn’t move in with her.”

Another laugh, this one even more bitter and cold. His eyes dance with something that would have been called amusement if it wasn’t so deadened. “God, Raven and her big fucking mouth,” he says, not without a bit of fondness. His hands are clumsy without the cigarette in them. Like he doesn’t know what to do with them. They fall to the patio chair and he starts to rock it back and forth. He doesn’t look her in the eye. 

“I mean, that was part of it. But, it was so much other shit too. We were fighting all the time. Seemed to disagree on fucking everything. And, god, did she and Octavia hate each other. The only time we weren’t fighting was when we were having sex or helping each other with our dissertations. I don’t know. She’s an intense person. So am I. Both of us had fucked up childhoods. It’s not a surprise that us being in love with each other can be a blood bath sometimes.” 

Her insides shatter at his use of present tense. His insistence on the love he still has for her. She sucks in a breath and tries to compose herself. “Do you still love her?” she finds herself asking and she hates herself for it, the sad, desperate way the words slip out of her mouth and how they hit him, the way his eyes widen and then harden, like he’s trying to hide from her. 

“Of course I do,” he says. There’s a rough edge to his words, protecting a vulnerable truth. She watches him tense his jaw then relax it. “I wish I didn’t. I wish I was one of those people who could just give up on people. But, I can’t. I’ve never been able to let go of anyone,” he trails off, staring at his hands. Then, after too much time passes, his eyes flick up and they make eye contact for the first time since he stepped onto the patio. “Can you?”

Clarke feels it bubble up in her, the secret she’s been keeping from herself. That she loves him. That she’s loved him since she was a little girl, two pigtail braids and a desperation for affection, always praying that he would notice her. That the love she has for him has sublimated who she used to be, a deadened thing whose only want was keeping herself safe, protected, even if that meant living a life that was not worth living. 

Because, if she could give up on people, if the same traitorous, too much heart that beats in his chest didn’t also beat in her own, she would have cut out the part of her that’s fallen for him like a tumor because it is wretched and it is unholy and it threatens to destroy her whole life and the small semblance of peace she’s allowed herself. But, she can’t. All she can do is stare at him, mouth wide like a guppy, and shake her head because she knows that if she opens her mouth, everything would fall out. 

“Are you going to get back together with her?”

Just like her question from before, it jumps from her lips before she can stop the words from twisting their way around her tongue. She hates this tendency of hers - to always ask the worst questions, the ones that make her hurt the most, just because she has this itch to know everything terrible. 

“I don’t know,” he says, finally, once the silence between them has stretched too long. “At the beginning of the summer, I was sure we were going to. But, now…” his voice drops off in a way that she can’t help but inject meaning into. He reaches into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes again. This time, he passes her one and she takes it and lets him light it for her. Their eyes meet over the flame. 

“Did something change?” she asks, unable to help herself. He holds her gaze for a beat too long. Reaches out and pushes a strand of her hair behind her ear. 

“You could say that,” is all he says in reply, leaving her to fill in the blanks. She feels something terrifying and too much building in her chest. They smoke without speaking for what feels like forever, the vibration of what hasn’t been said buzzing through both of their bodies. 

She feels it then: the exhaustion of living the lie that she doesn’t love him the whole summer. It’s bone-deep, eating at very essence of her. This can’t go on any longer: the pretending, the delusion, the way she's always aware of her body’s proximity to his and how the closer she is, the less control she has. 

“This has gone too far,” she says, finally, once her cigarette is done. She’s standing across from him. He’s staring into the ocean over her shoulder. His mouth opens but nothing comes out. After a few beats, he just nods. 

“I know we’re both trying. To keep it from going any farther.” There’s a tremble in her voice that she so desperately wishes she could hide. She knows now: this is the moment where they end. She turns away from him because she doesn’t want to have to look him in the eye when he tells her this is over. 

“What if we stop trying?” Bellamy says, so quiet she just barely catches it. Her heart stutters in her chest. She spins around, unable to believe what she’s hearing. 

“What?”

There’s a new magic about his eyes now. He reaches for her hands, pulls her close to him. She can feel him trembling. 

“You make me happy. Do I make you happy?”

She’s so caught off guard that any response she has dies prematurely in her throat, her mouth hanging open. “But, the wedding….” she starts but he shakes his head. Grips her hands tighter. 

“You aren’t answering my question. Do I make you happy?”

Tears sting at her eyes. She does not even know how to begin to answer that question, to quantify the chaotic sort of light that Bellamy and loving him has brought to her life. She does not know if it would be correct to call it happiness - just because she’s never known happiness to make her feel so wild and lost. 

Unable to speak, still afraid of betraying too much, she nods. 

“Then, why do we need to make this so complicated? Sure, our parents are getting married in March. But, it’s July fucking 23rd. I don’t see why something that’s happening in eight goddamn months should keep us from being happy right now.”

She can just barely hear his words over the thundering of her pulse.

A million thoughts race through her mind’s eye. She thinks about her mother and the broken slope of her shoulders after Jake’s funeral and how they only lifted after Marcus started taking her out for coffee once a week to see how she was doing. She thinks about Octavia and the broken way Bellamy used to plead for her to come back on the phone, in the room above hers, and how it would make her cry, listening to someone be so cruel to someone who loves them so much. She thinks about Shaw and Raven and how Raven had seemed so much lighter once she had someone to share her burdens with, the things that she used to think made her hard to love. 

Most of all, she thinks of her father and the way he still smiled when she walked into his room at hospice, hooked up to so many different contraptions that he was more machine than man, and every rise-fall of his chest feeling like it was stolen from a god without mercy. She would always cry because she knew that this time could be the last time and he would shake his head, pull her to his chest, and soothe his hand up and down her back. He would tell her he loved her over and over again and that there was no reason to cry and that they should be happy to have these moments, each one of them even more of a blessing because it might be the last. 

“Okay,” she says, after his words have hung in the air for too long. 

“Okay?” His smile is infectious and despite the tears in her eyes, she feels the corners of her mouth lifting as well. 

“I’m not very good at being happy. But, I’m willing to try.”

“That’s my girl,” he says and then they’re kissing again. His mouth tastes like tobacco and she’s sure hers does too. The soft chirping of crickets fills the air. Distantly, Clarke hears the ocean lapping at the beach. There’s Bellamy’s heart, beating against the palm of her hand, just as quickly as hers. And, she lets herself be consumed by him and the false promise of something that burns too well to last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. Thank you, as always, for your comments and your kudos. There have been some questions regarding how much longer this story will be. I would say right now, I'm planning on another 4-7 chapters so this is definitely gonna be on the longer side. I'm so excited to hear what y'all think about this chapter!! :-)


End file.
